No race

Howling wind from the NE caused the race to be cancelled this thursday. So here's a nice photo of the jamon that we eat at Stuart's house instead.

Rear Admiral's Cup 2 - Hugh Rose Trophy

We battled on saturday to actually finish the race, but there was no wind to be had quite soon after we'd rounded the windward mark at Arish Mell in third place. In fact there were only two finishers of the race Snow Goose and a half tonner from the RNSA called High Hopes which looked like a good fast boat.

Darren and Kerry had gone on Manana as we had too many people and Mickey didn't have enough in the light airs. It was fun trading tacks with them and watching them hoist all the headsails that they had including the drifter and the blooper. Manana's offshore track seemed better than our inshore when the wind shut off!

Still a nice day out on the water but no results for WSC boats in this race. Let's hope we have good breeze for the third and final race on 27th. I'm absolutely determined that the cup is coming to our club this year!

End of thursday 1 series.

So no cup for FarrOut at the end of the thursday one series. What can I say: we were forced right on the first beat, everyone else went left. The breeze filled from the left, game over.

A new thursday series starting next week.....

YCW Cherbourg_2010_Rattler.mpg

Cherbourg for the weekend

We had a great race on Rattler to Cherbourg on friday - second over the water and on handicap but not by much. Draig won.

We came back on sunday upwind neck and neck with Draig. Some video above.

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

Rear Admiral's Cup - Race 1

The Rear Admiral's Cup is for teams of three boats from the local sailing clubs: Castle Cove (CCSC), Royal Dorset (RDYC), Royal Naval Sailing Association (RNSA) and Weymouth Sailing Club (WSC). Today was the first race of a series of three and the WSC team was Sole Bay, Folio and FarrOut. We had an excellent afternoon scoring first, fifth and second.

Again a good showing from the FarrOut crew finishing second over the water to Iduna (X332), and our new sails were fantastic.

Perfect Conditions - Thurs 1/3

Well the third race of the thursday evening IRC series and we were third, narrowly having beaten Scoline by 3 seconds corrected time.

We had a great 12-15knot breeze from about 240 degrees with a windward mark of "D" and a laid leeward mark. The race officer sent the PY class around this mark to starboard and the IRC class to port - entertaining. Down the first run we had a fine tussle with Scoline as she flew her kite stbd pole and we were port pole.

We had all 6 of the regular crew onboard and it's such a delight when everyone knows the boat and does their level best to get her as fast as possible.

Shiny Sails

Last thursday's race - Weymouth Sailing Club's IRC series Thurs 1/2, was the first chance we had of flying our new mainsail. We didn't do well in the race mainly due to using the No. 1 headsail when I think the No.3 would have got us higher and faster (plus that's brand new as well).
The new sails are from Hyde and built in Dimension Polyant's X10 and X15 aramid cloth.
The new main fitted perfectly and thanks to Wooderz of Hyde Sails for that. Hopefully try the new No. 3 out this thursday.
We're also racing on saturday this week representing WSC in this year's Rear Admiral's Cup series. Hopefully we can take that cup from the Royal Dorset!

Thursday 1/1 - IRC series

Farr Out scored a victory last night in light and patchy breeze. We managed to beat Draig O'r Mor (Dehler 36db) and Sapphire (Dehler 33) as well as the two Sigma 33s Scoline and Snow Goose. We came third over the line and clinched it by 39 seconds corrected. We had a good start on port, tacking onto starboard into the rest of the boats. A good start to the summer racing and an example of the focus that the team are putting in now. Stuart drove, Bob trimming, Dave foredeck and I did mainsheet and guy.

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.

Sunburn and shouting

We're having some gorgeous weather here in Weymouth at the moment, everybody loves it though us sailors are a bit peeved at the lack of wind on a sunday morning. The breeze was patchy yesterday for race 3 of the Yacht Clubs of Weymouth spring series. We didn't have a right lot of speed on the boat when we arrived at the start line as the gun went....so we ended up in a lot of trouble with boat on boat incidents. Hopefully we didn't upset people too much but sometimes you're in a situation you'd rather not be in...

After the procession of a race last week, it was a welcome change to have a bit of other boat interaction.  Roll on next week.

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....

Tough Little Laser

You may have seen reports on Sailing Anarchy etc. about the carnage in the Southern Straits race in Canada last weekend. One boat sank and her six crew rescued, and it's worth watching some of the fantastic surfing video from the boats on YouTube.

There was at least one Laser 28 out there; Voila owned by Frank Fletcher. He tells his story on the Laser 28 forum: http://www.laser28.org/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=379&SID=84d74f343bb141c35c14cb85db43dcf8

57 knots across the deck!

YCW Spring Series - Race 1

After all the rain we've been having, the first race of the season on easter sunday was comparitively warm with mid teens wind gusting to early twenties.

What can I say? There were 5 boats in the IRC class and we were fifth! In hindsight our port start put us on the right in clear wind (all the other boats were faster than us), but maybe we should have stayed with the fleet.

Our first gybe of the season saw the first broach. All a bit rusty and I suppose there was a fair amount of wind. Good times though. Need those new sails, No. 3 seems to be disintegrating!