WSC Autumn Series - Race 1

With 3 of our regular 6 out this week for various reasons and an easterly airflow and predicted sunshine, this race was probably over for us before it started. As the slowest boat in the IRC fleet the predicted happened and the thermal killed the gradient breeze and we finished in very little breeze.

The start had been delayed as the race officer failed to hoist the IRC start and plenty of the fleet had started on the PY start. Bit of a mess and the rib was sent to call boats back.

Our start was a little slow because we were trying to control the pin end. We ended up at the back and we struggled to make our way through the PY tail enders as the breeze dropped.

As we were so far back we missed the pile up at the leeward mark. Effusion, Draig, Excalibur and others will be visiting a protest room sometime soon where no doubt the ins and outs of rule 18.2 will be discussed! Prang.

Autumn 6 of 6. RIP white kite!

A blustery 20+ northerly for the finale of the WSC autumn series. Once again the lovely North Sails No. 4 headsail was out of the bag and we were trying to put the reef in pre-start when I decided that we didn't haven't time to do it and went back to full main, probably the right call at the end of the day.

Another decent start and not bad beats, we could have done with one more on the rail. Things improved on the first spinnaker leg when our 9.5-10 knots of boat speed fairly hunted down the white sailing Sigma 33s. Unfortunately neither Sigma finished the race so we were left plugging away at the back of the fleet, trying to catch Rocket and Rattler.

A long deep run across the bay from B to I with a following sea did us lots of favours, but FarrOut was hard to hang onto! On the next spinnaker leg the flogging as we tried to get the old Owen Sails white kite under control in 30 knots put paid to our ambitions as we were left with edge tapes and an empty triangle as the old campaigner burst dying the noble death of a well used race sail. So much more fitting than mouldering in a shed covered in patches. Ho hum - time to get one of those mouldy, patched spinnakers out the shed for next week then...

So a 5th today and 6th overall in the series, finishing just half a point behind Scoline. We have been the only boat to sail all races without a retirement, our young crew are getting better all the time and when you look at the quality of the boats ahead of us I don't think it's been a bad show. It's been a fun series, looking forward to the winter series starting next week.

Frustratingly No Wind

Alice, Stephen and Adam in the sunshine

God I hate no wind days. Some people might relish the opportunity to test how good a sailor they are by spotting little whisps of air in the distance and perfecting sail trim, me I'm too grumpy for that and just hate it, I just wanna thrash around at high speed.

But that was sunday's start to the YCW autumn series, no wind accompanied by a searing sun. Our start was pretty good and we knew which way to go but the lack of a genoa in our sail inventory as well as going hunting for wind that didn't appear was the death knell for the short, fat laser 28. All the boat trim, not using the rudder and twisted sails couldn't make up for the malaise both physically and spititually that we were in as we watched all the faster boats in the IRC fleet and even the PY fleet sail away from us.

You could say that we should concentrate harder on our light airs performance.....I say go fishing or water skiing on a day like sunday, that was no weather for sailors!.....yeah we were last.

Melges 24 Spi on a Laser 28 / Autumn Long Distance.

The bank holiday monday finally gave us the opportunity to get down to the boat and mess around with bits of timber. We had been given an old Melges asymmetric at the start of the summer which is bigger than our current SB3 kite. A bit of pythagoras told us that we needed a bowsprit of around 1.25m to fly it.

I searched the yard and found an old bit of mahogany off the marina pontoons and Darren got to work with his saw and drill. We removed all of our constructions before the Autumn long distance race but had some time afterwards to play.

Can you hear banjos? The 1m long sprit

Flying like a dream!

This is the life

The inevitable.

 So the result was that the kite flew beautifully in the gentle 10 or so knots, we were really fast. We carried out a series of gybes which were really easy. The prod we made was actually 1m long but 1.25m would be better I think. Eventually it snapped.

Great stuff, but after the test we concluded the following:

• In a lot of breeze we wouldn't have enough keel or rudder to hold it.
• The permanent bowsprit would probably need to be about 75mm diameter to take the load.
• It would never be worth the rating hit.
• If you want to fly a big ayso. Sell the Laser and buy a J!

We handed the spinnaker on to Daddsie to try flying it on his boat. We'll stick with the Touareg.

Autumn Long Distance

We were late over the line for this race, mostly due to titting around with bits of wood. We selected right hand side of the beat which was the lifting tack. By the second mark we'd overtaken Rocket and were chasing Draig. A disastrous kite call from me saw us lose some ground, however at W mark at Hamm beach Darren pulled off a lovely bow launch whilst holding all the kite in his arms.

A shifty beat back over to B saw us do quite well, one big shift putting us right on the money. We didn't see any results, definately not a win but I'd hope we were up there.

Autumn Long Distance

Not such a long distance but at least out to W over by Hamm beach in Portland Harbour. It was about the right length of race given the fickle light northerly.

Pre-start we managed to sail a bit up the beat to B deciding that the left side was the lifting tack, trouble was that this may have been true but was quickly changed to a header due to the shifts, there were many tacks on shifts up the beat with boat positions changing as well.

We didn't end up badly at the windward mark and hoisted a symmetrical kite, though having to gybe when we got stuck under the Mustang 30 Neigh Chance. We had a lot of gybes before the northern entrance to Portland harbour but I think the tactic played out quite well for us. Without the big masthead kite of Scoline or Rumrunner we weren't going to flop downwind in no air and with Dave on the foredeck being quite slick with the gybes we could keep our air clear and the speed on.

The race was lost but we did our best on the upwind section back from W with the cobwebs blown off of the genoa, which we were suprisingly quite happy with, we may see a resurgence of that sail!

So a nice sunny day on the water, with some lessons learnt about our light airs performance:

1. The genoa may not be all bad.
2. Neigh chance will luff you if you go over the top, and you won't get underneath so gybe away. You might just get the benefit of a shift.
3. If we have three people in the cockpit in light airs we will sit our flat backside in the water. Fore and aft trim might be our problem.

Congratulations to Scoline on their win.

 A smiling Robert, pleased to see the genoa again.

So close

So close to winning the series....Did the broach on race 4 lose it for us? What would have happened if race 5 hadn't been cancelled? Should we have protested race 3? If race 5 wasn't cancelled would we have been at the club and have protested race 3?

Anyway, well done to Paul and his crew. There's the winter series starting on sunday (although there's a big blow predicted for the weekend).

After stating after the Virtual Vendee Globe that I wouldn't do another virtual yacht race, I'm steering FarrOutGBR814WeySC in the virtual Transat Jacques Vabre. Doing alright at the moment (around 2,500 / 85,000) and am hopefully going the right way.

Autumn 2 - They come in threes....

I was apprehensive as we left the mooring for the 2nd race of the WSC autumn series. We'd had two breakages already: a lifting point on the inflatable tender and the main halyard shackle had given up the ghost. We all know that these things come in threes, what was next?

In the twenty knot gust conditions we were flying, boat speed of 9 knots at one point. Luckily the third thing to break was the pole downhaul block shackle and Dave on the bow sorted this by keeping his foot on it while we were doing around 8 knots, he then fixed it in enough time for the gybe.

A second place to Sole Bay on corrected, but we were out front all the way round and maybe lost a bit of time on a trapped spi halyard problem, resolved by Rich Veale by hoisting on gen 2.

All in all a good sail and great to see that we still have the boat up to speed even with me driving!

WSC Autumn Series - Race 1

I managed to prise the tiller from Stuart's hands for the first race of the autumn series, or to be more correct Stephen let me do it because by rights it should have been his turn. I really liked getting back on the helm but made sure to learn from Stuart's techniques for getting the boat going fast - I think I read somewhere about Laser 28s "first go fast then point".

Still sailing in PY class which means we're the fastest boat in class, it makes a change from being the slowest boat in the IRC class. This meant that we were first over the water by a pretty good margin and eventually coming third on handicap to boats behind. Ho hum, we had a patch of very light air that maybe they didn't get. We sailed a good race with moments of brilliance, for me the best bit was an inside overlap leeward mark rounding with a windward spinnaker drop which took out Foxed Again and Snow Goose (even though they weren't in the same class!). Great crew work from everyone.

Looking forward to next week.....