Route du Rhum 2010

I'm started to get excited about the Route du Rhum. Of course I'll support Safran in the Open 60s as ever but I have an idea that Armel Le Cleac'h (BritAir) can beat Mich Desj (Foncia), although the prof has got a new boat....it will be interesting to watch, I wouldn't bet any money on it though!

The Categorie Ultime multihulls are going to be amazing with these massive 100' + machines lined up against each other; Thomas Coville (Sodebo) vs. Frank Cammas (Groupama). 46 classe 40s....in fact 87 boats signed up at the moment.

Not long now.

http://www.routedurhum-labanquepostale.com/en/s01_home/s01p01_home.php

Autumn Race 3 - Max Points!

Another maximum point performance from FarrOut this sunday morning. We were doomed from the start being the slowest boat in the fleet and a forecast dying breeze. Sure enough the wind died off a lot but I think the filthy hull was a big problem to us. A lift out this friday should sort this out but I really haven't been happy with the performance of our anti-fouling this year.

All smiles on FarrOut though, as we used the tail end of the race to work on our boat speed and think that we have got an improvement there. There's nothing worse than working your butts off to go as fast as possible and then some flash git zooming past you, I stumbled on a YouTube video that indicates this quite well.....let's make sure we're the overtaker and not the overtaken. Enjoy.

Beneteau First 30, Juan K - Mich Desj

The FarrOut boys were disappointed by the new Beneteau First 30 when we had a poke around at the Southampton boat show. We were expecting to be entranced but instead were numbed by the poor level of finishing, it maybe that the test boats were rushed out to the boat shows but personally I'd have had someone fairing that keel bulb overnight seeing as though it was directly in the eyes of the public. Stepping from the First 30 onto a J97 turned frowns to smiles; a totter down the pontoon to an Archambault A31 and the smiles turned to leers.

The excellent Swedish blog Blur.se got to have a test sail on the First 30 and have published some polars and a test IRC cert. Worth having a look, click the translate button if your Swedish is rusty: http://www.blur.se/2010/10/12/first-30-polar-irc/#comments

Can we forgive the poor finish quality and stumpy looking mast if it goes like a train and wipes out bigger competition under IRC yet still satisfies the "sell it to the wife as a child friendly cruiser" test?

Still think Steve and Richard preferred the old salty cruiser boat at the boat show, they worry me......

Autumn Series Race 2

It was a very rusty and hung over FarrOut crew that made it out of Weymouth harbour on sunday morning. It was blowing quite hard from the east and our broken engine couldn't deliver us enough power meaning that we had to short tack out of the harbour causing a bit of drama first thing and a desperate scrabble to get the headsail up.

We went for a conservative sail plan of No. 4 headsail and full main, which maybe left us underpowered at times but not on our ears at others.....ho hum always a difficult choice. It was blowing at least 20 and with some seas that tended to keep our speed down to windward. With an excellent turnout in the IRC class (9 boats) and a poor turnout in PY, only 1 boat so Rumrunner opted to sail around behind us. We were deemed OCS and dipped back and then touched a mark so did a penalty turn, this as well as having a nasty kite wrap caused us to pick-up 9 points!

With lighter airs forecast next week we might do better.

WSC autumn series 1 - blown out

The expected southerly gale put the mockers on this sunday's racing. I haven't been sailing for about 4 weeks, incredible.

We're looking forward to racing against the new boat in the fleet, a guest appearance for the winter from the Capo30 Santana. Bob has jumped ship to join them, so we have a vacant space in the middle of the boat which I think one of us owners will fill.

Mast down and up day.

FarrOut's wobbly masthead tricolour finally shook itself off of the top of the mast. We couldn't sail the boat with it like that so we had to foresake racing this sunday and sort it out.

Clearly a mast climb was not going to be the best way to sort it out, plus none of us feel light enough to go up there. As sunday morning was high water springs we were able to get alongside the new WSC crane and drop the rig. This transpired into a drop on sunday and a raising on monday morning which gave us more time to do the bits needed and tune the rig.

All back up and just as well we dropped it as a bolt was also missing from our expensive Raymarine wind instrument. Unfortunately I forgot to measure the forestay to make sure we had the exact length required. We'll have to see how she goes...

Start of Sunday Series 05 Sept - Big Seas

An easterly in Weymouth Bay is lumpy so it's not a great surprise that not many boats were out for the Sunday series, 2 in PY and 3 boats in IRC. It was blowing early twenties and a great day not to have Dave our usual foredeck man with us. I was voted in for the job so got wet and have now got ripped oilys.

There's a bit of a mess up on the results so I can't tell you where we came just yet but we had some broaches and avoided a couple of chinese gybes. All kind of frenetic.

Artemis wins overall in Sevenstar Round Britain and Ireland Race

Big congratulations to Jonny Malbon and the crew of Artemis Ocean Racing in their overall victory of the Sevenstar RBI race, this on top of them beating the Imoca 60 record for the course.

It's about time they had some real success in that team, they deserve the win.

Autumn Long Distance

Not such a long distance but at least out to W over by Hamm beach in Portland Harbour. It was about the right length of race given the fickle light northerly.

Pre-start we managed to sail a bit up the beat to B deciding that the left side was the lifting tack, trouble was that this may have been true but was quickly changed to a header due to the shifts, there were many tacks on shifts up the beat with boat positions changing as well.

We didn't end up badly at the windward mark and hoisted a symmetrical kite, though having to gybe when we got stuck under the Mustang 30 Neigh Chance. We had a lot of gybes before the northern entrance to Portland harbour but I think the tactic played out quite well for us. Without the big masthead kite of Scoline or Rumrunner we weren't going to flop downwind in no air and with Dave on the foredeck being quite slick with the gybes we could keep our air clear and the speed on.

The race was lost but we did our best on the upwind section back from W with the cobwebs blown off of the genoa, which we were suprisingly quite happy with, we may see a resurgence of that sail!

So a nice sunny day on the water, with some lessons learnt about our light airs performance:

1. The genoa may not be all bad.
2. Neigh chance will luff you if you go over the top, and you won't get underneath so gybe away. You might just get the benefit of a shift.
3. If we have three people in the cockpit in light airs we will sit our flat backside in the water. Fore and aft trim might be our problem.

Congratulations to Scoline on their win.

 A smiling Robert, pleased to see the genoa again.

Last of the August Series - oops, last.

A disappointing sail for race 6 of the WSC august series. Really light airs meant that we struggled to get the boat going and it was one of the few times that we probably needed a genoa. We're slow in the light both up and down wind, we need to work on this.

Anyway, we finished the series in second place with RWH winning and Scoline on equal points in third place.

Bring on the sunday series......and some wind.

August Race 5

A win for FarrOut in monday evening's race as part of the Weymouth Sailing Club August Series. We managed to pip RWH by 20 seconds corrected time in the PY handicap division.

The race started in a lot of wind, we saw 32-35 knots according to the instruments which meant that we started with a reef in the mainsail and the No. 4 jib. Sigma 33 Scoline had a great start with a port tack flyer at the pin end - hang on isn't that our tactic? Fortunately flying the ayso spinnaker meant that we overtook them on the first spinnaker leg which they quite rightly white sailed.

The rapidly shortening evenings mean that we only got one triangle in which was fortunately enough but we would have preferred the sausage leg as well.

The series sits in the balance with RWH having it at the moment on 4 points whilst we have 7. Thursday is the last in the series and the weather may decide it for us. For once I'll be hoping for some deep-down runs!

Stuart (left) was helm for this race and Stephen (right) on mainsheet:

August series race 4 - Tragic abandon

Our race was abandoned last night as the Race Officer Malcolm Terry collapsed aboard Viking 2, the commitee boat, during the start sequences. He was airlifted by the SAR helicopter but didn't recover. A shocking period for everyone and our condolences to his family on his passing.

Congratulations Armel!

Armel Le Cleac'h has won the Figaro for the second time. An unstoppable performance with 3 out of 4 leg wins put him at the highest point of the podium. He is a worthy challenger to Michel Desjoyeaux for the title of  best solo sailor in the game.

I've "supported" him for a number of years after that great picture from the AG2R in, I think, 2004:

Whooohooo........

August Series Race 3

Stuart drove a great start putting us on the pin end of the line with pin bias as the horn went. We kept the left side whereas the rest of the fleet went right for some reason that I couldn't fathom, I think the two MGC27s came with us though. We'd already established on thursday, if not before!*!, that the left hand side was the lifting tack in this NNW breeze. This put us first to the windward mark.

The race officer had set a course with a 140 apparent, gybe, 170 apparent course so that stuffed our asymmetric schenanigans. On questioning he said that he'd been told to do that....

My investigations recently show that we are lacking 20m2 of spinnaker downwind compared to the class kite, however I think that this maybe down to measuring a kite as a rectangle in PHRF in US/Canada rather than the way IRC measures. Even so we seem to be missing some cloth and lack speed in light and medium airs at these angles and the boats with big masthead kites can get away from us. We had the wrong kite clipped in anyway.

Just about then we forget about the favoured left side on the beat as we see Sapphire headed in front of us, go right and get stuffed. Then we end up loose covered by Hooligan, we carry on out to the starboard layline but, wrong, wrong, wrong we needed to break cover and go left.

At least I suppose if we can identify where we went wrong we can try not to do it in the future! 7th out of 12 boats in PY.

August Series Race 2 - Weymouth Sailing Club

Helm Stephen applauds Sigma 33 Scoline in the distance after another exhilirating race last night. Another reach to reach course gave JS9000 RWH the win again and Sigma 33 Snow Goose sailed impeccably well to get the 2nd and first in IRC. We were 4th in PY but again we only had four on board.

Rattler came past our 1st kite leg on the way into Weymouth harbour so hopefully they've got a nice "Touareg" photo for us!


The Rolex Commodore's cup starts this weekend with GBR being the current holders but against some very strong competition, the french have four teams whereas we've got three which don't include any Archambault boats but do include a Farr 45, I don't know that much about it but that worries me, let's hope beneteaus and superior sailing is enough! Link here
Edit 18th Aug: oh yeah, I get it now about the Farr 45 thing, very clever....Alice II beat the tidal gates in the offshore race to win class 1 by a country mile! I should be more supportive of Farr designs.

The last stage of the Figaro sets off from Kinsale on monday with Armel "The Jackal" Le Cleac'h sure of an overall win. Link here