Showing posts with label breakages. Show all posts
Showing posts with label breakages. Show all posts

Monday, 9 July 2012

Weymouth Regatta 2012

Our regatta this year was down to two days saturday and sunday. What we got was one day as saturday was the biggest downpour, it honestly did not stop raining all day and that coupled with a SSE wind of anywhere between 6 kts and 40 kts meant that the bay was lumpy and horrible. The PRO Adrian Patterson did right in eventually canning the entire day.

Sunday was an all together different day with sunshine and a moderate breexe which built in the late afternoon. The race commitee wer able to squeeze in three races.
FarrOut had four aboard for sunday, we could have done with one more in the end, the short courses meant a lot of sail handling and it was all a bit busy.

The results show that there were three sigma 33s in our class, a half tonner, an Elan 333 and evidently a J80 although I thought this was in PY1!

The first race is probably best forgotten, I was driving and had a nightmare. Race 2 Stephen drove and I guess we got into our groove a bit better. A nice windshift meant that we could lay the windward mark in one tack and a start in the right place meant that we were second to get there after the Elan. High Hopes the half tonner was being much more close winded than us and underneath and kept pointing into us, so much so that they hit us to a hail of "protest" from me - you don't hear that very much. I get a bit angry if you hit FarrOut!

Unfortunately we couldn't keep our lead on the Sigmas, we were just not good enough upwind in what was the longest race of the day. There's probably a number of reasons for this but I fancy we have less pre-bend in the mast than last year and I'm going to put some more in. Steve was beating himself up about it though.

The third race was a decent showing from us even if the starboard primary winch stopped working just as we crossed the start line. Steve did a great job of cross winching us through the race. But...it's another broken bit. Doesn't seem to stop recently.

Great fun races for us though. Full team and more pre-bend next year.

Monday, 12 October 2009

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!