Shore bound but Itching - Here comes NHC

We last went racing on boxing day, 26th December, last year! Almost two and a half months ago and I'm feeling it. I think this year has been harder than previous years due to the amount of sailing club work I've had to do in my role of Vice Commodore, that's a lot of talking about going sailing without actually doing any.

This season has lots going for it and I'm especially looking forward to our channel crossing at the end of June. Not a particularly taxing bit of navigation (I hope!) but it will be good to stretch the legs a bit. Work and family life makes it difficult to do any passages, the only time we got out of the bay last season was to go to the Isle of Wight for the Round the Island Race. This year I won't be going as I will use my time allowance to go to Cherbourg. Also looking forward to racing the Yacht Club de Cherbourg in the Grande Rade.

Once in Cherbourg it would be great to carry on going. I'd like to go down to Jersey, but I guess we will have to return home. Perhaps we can get another weekend later in the year and go to Torquay or something.

But with the racing season coming on I'm trusting that we will keep our present, highly tuned, crew. It really does make a difference when everyone knows their job and can do it, it's something that money can't really buy and we're definately not the most monied campaign out there. Our season starts with the YCW Spring Series held on four consecutive sundays starting 14th April. I think currently we're the only entry and we've already bought our IRC certificate.

This season sees a mighty change in club racing in the UK with the sport's governing body, the RYA, abandoning Portsmouth Yardstick (PY) for yachts. The system is to be replaced by "NHC" a varying handicapping system which has had input from IRC in its concept as well from WSC's own HALS race results. It's a performance handicapping system who's number evolves as the data gets plugged into it, a bit like the Irish ECHO system. In fact the success of ECHO is one of the only things I can see that it has going for it, I dislike being penalised for being good or encouraging mediocrity. However I accept that club racing needs a fresh injection to make it more appetising. I'm sure that IRC see it as a way of getting more take up for IRC as serious racers will prefer to be rated this way. Perfect, but I think the feedback from the customer to RORC rating is that the price of an IRC certificate needs to be halved. The combination of these two moves will ensure the future of IRC. I even suggested to the boys that we didn't buy an IRC cert this year in a moment of madness, they of course would have none of it. We might not win all the time but at least we are racing and rated fairly.

The introduction of NHC at Weymouth Sailing Club also sees the continuation of all-in fast & slow class starts. This means that NHC/PY/IRC boats of a similar speed all start together, this improves the racing experience for everyone.

At the end of the day it's the wind in your hair and the spray in your face that should be drawing people to yacht racing. Do you know, sometimes you don't even have to go and look at the results? Racing is not about winning, it's just better when you can't wipe that grin off of your face...that's what keeps you struggling and competing. Handicapping can niggle at this experience, one design removes this a little but will expose you as not as good a sailor as you thought you were. IRC rating is a middle way that definately gives the correct results in our bay - more boats need certificates and I'm sad to say Mr Urwin cutting your costs/expectations and halving the costs is the only way that we can save club racing in these parts.

YCW Spring Series Race 1 - Victory

Victory in our first race of the season, albeit somewhat hollow as there were only two IRC boats coming to the line; us and Wildfire the Beneteau 36.7. The upshot was that we won by over two minutes. Hooray, but not much of a confort as we definately would have lost to Effusion the Elan 295 if they'd  had an IRC cert. Got to be in it to win it I suppose.

It was an all in IRC/PY start.The race started well for FarrOut with a perfectly timed pin end start, keeping our air clear and diving to the favoured left. When Wildfire tacked back in after rolling over us, we went as well to stay with the race rather than banging the left corner which was definately a lifting tack. This meant that Orion the Achilles 9m got to the windward mark before us, though by the wing mark we'd caught up and they messed around on the gybe and we were able to cut inside and overtake.

Wildfire and Effusion romped away, but we knew that the race was not with the other PY boats. It was on the deep run that it all went wrong for us with a horrible spi/headsail wrap. We impeded Orion's progress and let them through as we sorted ourselves out and got back in the groove.

Not a faultless showing from us, but enough for a win. You have to presume that Wildfire had issues and were messing up as well in order not to win. But I guess on short course racing with lots of sail handling and in a fair amount of wind it's difficult for the bigger boat to beat a Laser 28.....well sailed or not!

Thanks to Iain Jones and the race team for an exhilirating race to start the season off for us. Glad to see that Steve Dadd, sailing on Orion, is back fighting fit after receiving a blow to the head and getting carted off to hospital.

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.

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.

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!

YCW Spring Series - overall

Sunday's racing was brilliant. Two races were carried out in near perfect conditions with three starts for the two races, the first start for the IRC fleet getting a general recall. The racing was really competitive and I think FarrOut showed well with a 5th and a 3rd.

So we finished the series around mid table, so considering the dreadful first race we had  and then the wind dying and not being able to finish in race 3, not bad at all.

Thursday evening racing starts this week, with the Q class being carried out under IRC rating this year. I'm hoping that it will be as good as this sunday.

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....