Spring Series 4 - Long Distance. FarrOut first.

Easter sunday saw the long distance race of the YCW spring series. As we got to the boat the wind was peaking at 20 knots from the north with the potential to die from there. And so it was in a fickle breeze that we beat up to H off the seafront, reach off to O at the end of the pleasure pier and what should have been a nice ayso reach at 90 degrees over to R at Ringstead just kept going forward. We held the touareg at 60 degs as long as we could but we knew we had to go to white sail in order to launch the symmetrical kite for the run over to G off Grove Point on Portland. The crew of FarrOut kept working and kept us moving the right way. We chased the two Sigmas down to the beach, every time it went light we gained and as soon as they had a puff they went away again. As we reached H to turn for the line we managed to get in front of Snow Goose but they soon overtook again as we blundered a pressured kite hoist.

We'd stayed with the fleet and over almost 3 hours our rating was enough to give us the win.  this puts ourselves, Scoline and Sapphire all on six point as we come into the final two races of the series next sunday. We could do this......it would be a great way to start the season, but I won't pretend it's not going to be difficult.

Iain Jones took some photos from Spindrift, this one as we were coming up to G.

End of Autumn Series

We did our best to win the series but it was not to be. Paul Barford and his Achilles 24 managed to win the PY autumn series at Weymouth Sailing Club. We haven't got the official results yet but I feel confident that we were second.

Yesterday's race was delayed to a 1335 start due to rememberance day and we started in a cold and brisk northerly wind, gusting to 30 knots with about 24 constant but as always on the northerlies in our bay not very stable. The on-off wind saw Darren doing a lot of work on the mainsheet but keeping us flat and fast at 6.1-6.3 knots upwind under No. 4 headsail and one reef.

The job was one of maintaining a lead so we were going downhill under white sail mostly with a spi hoist only on the last lap. I had to agree that the gusty conditions could easily spin us out and while we were still pulling out our lead and people behind weren't hoisting then that was the right thing to do. On the other hand we had 6 guys on board who all know what they're doing and 25-30 knots of breeze, to me that's a recipe for the most fun you can have in a Laser 28!

When we were all moored up, Paul Barford entertained us by sailing onto his mooring, aborting on go one and going around again only to get a reefing line caught on a pile on the second go thereby pulling his boom off and ripping his mainsail: