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.

Henri Lloyd Weymouth Regatta

This weekend brings our annual town regatta. Entries are down this year with only four boats entered in IRC3. Such a shame as it's always enjoyable and a well run regatta.

We'll always enter, but I wonder if it's the entry prices that put people off. We have so much "free" racing in the borough with the various club races and under the YCW banner that it comes hard for people to pay for a good weekend - something that is usual in the Solent and elsewhere. But, it's only because people volunteer that the "free" racing is available. For the keelboat regatta to survive whilst the dinghy regatta thrives it needs people to consider it their duty to enter.

It's only by offering large fleet racing that we can encourage visiting boats to take part. We have the best sailing waters in Northern Europe, we can't keep it all to ourselves can we?

Henri Lloyd Weymouth Regatta 2010

The arrival of codename "Touareg" secret weapon coincided well with this year's regatta. Our entry into the PY1 class was a mistake as we got handicapped badly against the MGc27s which are to me a very similar speed boat in any weather until we can get planing. The long distance race on friday wasn't good for us, we just still seem to struggle to make the boat go in light airs.

As it was the IRC3 class, the class we should have entered, had the same start so we could have sailed against the MGs but have done a lot better in class, apart from we probably couldn't have flown our new sail......

Saturday and sunday were two races each day and in excellent conditions. The courses were also very well set by the race committee. Top boat speed for the weekend about 9.5knots under the ayso with a lot of whooping from us.

An all round excellent regatta even with the disappointing results. But that's life with FarrOut sine waves of brilliance and disappointment.

A catch up for this week.

I've not got around to making any posts for a while, just kind of busy. The final Rear Admiral's Cup race was a light airs affair (how I'm sick of those!) but I think we did alright and hopefully enough between Sole Bay and us to lift the cup, but once again we didn't make three boats representing Weymouth Sailing Club. It's OK though because I think no-one will be doing it next year!

Following that was a very disappointing thursday race, once again in fairly light airs, we probably had too many people on board and the dying evening breeze really scuppered us. I was quite down afterwards, wondering if my driving was rubbish or what it was. It's so depressing to see those Sigmas get away so easily. I think it was a lot of things that gave us a poor result but the major reason has to be Farr Out's bottom. I dived the boat on friday and found the bottom filthy with grass growing on port side. Now nicely scrubbed but I guess all the bright sunshine we've had over the last three weeks had really ramped up the weed growth, which kind of corresponds with the poor performances in light airs (I hope!). Maybe VC Offshore is not the antifoul to use in the location we're moored, I think we'll try something else next year.

So with a newly shiny bottom I'm looking forward to this weekend's Henri Lloyd Weymouth Regatta, where we've opted to enter the PY1 class so that we can play with MGC27s. You never know we might be able to use our new secret weapon.........