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.

Bash, Crash, Crunch - Spring Series Finale....

A muscely 20knots+ from the east greeted race 5 and 6 of the YCW spring series and brought with it some sizeable seas. For some reason Farr Out loves this kind of weather. Bashing to weather in the smallest boat in the fleet didn't seem to be a problem and once again we were able to do a good job at keeping with the fleet just to turn round marks to surf away and make gains on the bigger boats.

We were gunning for the title and Scoline and Sapphire were our rivals. Scoline unfortunately only had two of them to crew the boat so couldn't properly compete which was a great shame. We then had the sickening sight of Sapphire laying right over on being T-boned by the other, and first time out, Dehler 33 Rocket after a port/starboard bear away that didn't quite work. Nasty damaging stuff.

Farr Out didn't escape, as late in the second race after some great tussling with Snow Goose after they shut us out at the start and we caught up, we were surfing past to leeward of them and a following wave spun the boat out and we broached in a long curve which ended with a damaged stantion, lifeline and rail for Snow Goose and a crunch on the bow for Farr Out. Horrible, first time I've hit another boat and don't fancy repeating it.

At the end of all this exhilirating racing, and a top boat speed today for us of 10.3 knots, I'm pleased to report that Farr Out has won the YCW Spring Series 2011. We worked hard and our happiness would be complete if we hadn't have had that crunch at the end.

Bring on the rest of the season - evening racing starts this thursday.

Race 2 and 3. Light Airs Drifting

A gorgeous sunny day but no wind to speak of. My team talk on the mooring went something like this "We have to be on the money at the start or we've already lost. Today will all be about how tall your rig is and we've got the shortest one in the fleet!".

Race 2 was a decent start which put us to windward of the fleet, we were the first boat to tack to the right which I think paid for us, a couple of ayso reaches and a beat back to the line and it's all over. Third on corrected time.

Race 3 we had a lovely start at the commitee boat, the pin end bias sent the rest of the fleet that way keeping our air clear. The wind had filled just for this first beat but once we were around the corner it was difficult to keep the kite full. This time we were chasing Scoline who went deep looking for mark C and initially we followed although the GPS told us they were going the wrong way. We corrected and gybed back which probably gave us a better angle into the mark (if we'd have had the Touareg up and not the red symmetrical). Scoline had her big genoa and the next leg went close reach/fetch/beat as we went back to finish at the windward mark. This was the time in light airs when dropping the genoa from our sail inventory was a bad move....It was painful upto the line at sub 2 knots of boat speed. Forth on corrected time.

Not bad results, FarrOut now has 9 points with half of the 6 race series complete and 2 discards allowable.

Next week is the long distance race, so if we can stay up there then the longer the time racing then the more our rating can help us. Let's start praying for wind now. The beer locker is nice and full though!

Mitchell Trophy - sat 22nd May

Stuart and I entered this race double handed (well three handed if you count Mich' Desj' the autohelm). A real struggle to the windward mark saw us round in third, but standing on way past the layline helped in the fickle southerly zephyrs. We fetched into the mark with good speed. Unfortunately the breeze died to nothing and we slipped into a race on the tide with Folio, them waddling dead down with no air in the kite - and us gybing zig zagging trying to keep the kite full. They won - something to remember.

We thought it was more gracious to retire and have a beer. In fact there were only two finishers - RWH and Foxed Again. We towed some squibs back in, which was our good deed for the day!

Loads of nice boats were in Weymouth from Royal Southampton for their double race. Moondog (Laser28) stormed their class both ways - brilliant. See their report here: http://www.gbr7076.biz/m/index.html

YCW Spring series 2 - Long Race, DNF

Farr Out got recorded DNF (did not finish) yesterday. We were forced to retire when the wind totally shut off around 1430. The race had started just before 1100 when it was pretty windy.

A great shame because I think we were looking at a top three position before we run out of wind. The boat went well and the crew all did well, I don't think we made a lot of mistakes and our start was pretty good.

There's always next week....

Autumn 3 - struggle to finish

Got a first on this sunday morning race. I think we were the only ones to finish, which we did in about 1hr 10mins but the race was taken from the first time through the finish line (about 33 mins for us) and so the other boats in class got a finish as well.
Fair I suppose, but we played the conditions of no wind at all very well searching out bits of pressure and even used the incense sticks.

Another thursday in a dying wind

With her shiny new bottom Farr Out was gliding along on rails last night. The result was academic as once again the faster boats could finish in more breeze and it all but shut off for us. We had some nice sail handling although the race was marred on the start by Scoline who protested us. It was the same old thing of shutting us out at the committee boat end, we had Hooligan above us and could do nothing about it apart from protest Hooligan. We tend to spin out the way when this happens, they did it to us in the Rear Admiral's Cup last year and we were in the same team!

To protest or not to protest......some might say that you need to protest to enforce the rules and overturn the disadvantage that someone has thrown at you. Me, I think it's sad on a thursday night race in the bay and I have no enthusiasm for turning up on a tuesday four weeks hence to listen to somebody whinge to a disinterested protest committe. We don't even have a protest flag on board! (although we could fashion one from an ensign quickly, if you care to bring it on).

Ho hum, I think we'll carry on just having a word when feeling aggrieved - if it doesn't win us a match race against Mathieu Richard or James Spithill then never mind!

Draig are still going for it in the fastnet - overtaking stuff past Bishop Rock I hope.

Thursday night - wind off.....wind on

After a day of no wind for the squib nationals, we kinda expected the same. We motored out to the start on a glassy Weymouth bay with the visiting brigantine "Earl of Pembroke" looking gorgeous in the evening light. I considered asking them if they wanted to swap boats, but I'm kinda hoping for more gun ports.

As we motored around the transom noticing cat's paws rolling toward us, the wind filled from the south west and before we knew it we were doing 6 knots upwind.

I was about 30 seconds late on line (the wind died away again) and had a frustrating race where the run was dead down in NO wind. Not the best point of sail for a Laser 28. The first beat was marred by Rumrunner and then Scoline tacking in our water right in front of us, Scoline nearly had a Laser 28 trailer! Annoying but I'd have probably done the same thing.

After staying in front of us with their big masthead kite downwind, we accellerated away from Rumrunner to take the line and getting a horn. Unfortunately this was erroneous and the guys were de-rigging the kite sheets as we realised that we were still racing.

A pleasant evening though. The new chef's food hasn't improved since last week, so we'll go hungry next week! If he's reading this, sorry, but have a quick flick through Larousse Gastronomique and then spend some money on the ingredients. Cheers.

Another Drifter - Thursday 1 series race 3

Last night's race was again in no wind. A good start at the pin end with Hooligan OCS above us. Windward mark was I with no wind from about 230. We stayed left even when Snow Goose had tacked in. The zephyrs we were chasing disappeared with breeze filling in from the right (!) towards the end of the race at the windward mark after about 40 mins. Second on handicap. Happy enough with the result and really, really, love our new Raymarine analogue wind instrument.

Team Farr Out are going to name sponsor one of WSC's new optimists http://www.weysailclub.org.uk/, getting it ready for Millie and then Sam. We're gonna call her "Giggles Too" after our last boat the GK24 Chuckles Too and her comedy tender Giggles. Nice name for a kids' boat we think