Adam Checks out the Tuff Luff

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.

Spring Series starts this weekend.

We managed to drag a full crew out onto the water last sunday for a bit of pre-season training. Yes, we were very rusty and it was a worthwhile exercise. I think we all felt much better after about 50 gybes!

The start of the Weymouth Sailing Club season is this weekend with the Tony Bennett trophy - a pursuit race which will be won by a Squib or a Merlin Rocket. For us bigger boats it would have been a useful practice but we'll keep our powder dry for the YCW spring series which commences on sunday 15th.

Just to get us into the mood, here's some nice video from last weekend's Spi Ouest, check out 0.45s!

Back in the Water

All ready for the new season. FarrOut is back on her mooring. Stephen and I managed to take her for a sail for about 3/4 hour. It felt like I hadn't been sailing for ages!

Winter Yard Work - new bits

The yard work is progressing ready for launch on 10th March, early this year due to losing a couple of weeks out of the sailing programme because of the olympics.

We have a new Excel V12 backstay tackle:

Also the bowsprit now has the bobstay fitted in 4mm wire and the tack block is fitted on a soft loop using a bit of pipe insulation to make it stand up, this may not be a permanent solution. We will still be using the pole downhaul as a tack line for the ayso so need the snatch block, we are considering having a permanent tack line.....but where to fit the clutch?

Sprit Fixing

A day of maintenance on board FarrOut. Last week we had to remove the pulpit to feed a new wire for the bow light, it seemed a good idea to also remove the stainless bow fitting. Luckily a good fabricator friend of mine quickly turned around a fierce fixed bowsprit construction:

The extra out the bow should make those asymmetric gybes slicker and get the luff tighter for reaching. Hopefully the added projection will enable us to float the kite deeper.

Great stuff, now to declare it to IRC......we now check out with a longer STL, still shorter than the class pole though.

Boxing Day Photos

Rattler broaches on hoist

Rounding D

FarrOut hoist

Tacking down the harbour

Thanks to Phil Samways for the long lens photos.

Delayed Post

Apologies for not posting much recently, the Christmas season has been especially busy this year. FarrOut had a great Boxing Day race for which we invited Darren to have a go at driving her. The most notable part was the general recall of the all-in crusier class start. I'm sure it was caused by my saying to the crew that if we were over the line they couldn't have seen us on the committee boat due to the amount of yachts bunched there and the size of them.

We were certain that our second start was not goint to be as good as the first but sure enough we were on the front row again; there's been nothing wrong with our starts in recent series.

The results (on PY) weren't of much interest to us as we were probably stuffed beating up the river in a dying breeze. That coupled with a poor deep run where we were stuffed by the white sailing Seaquest 32 "Spindrift".

On wednesday 28th FarrOut came out of the water to sit for a while on her cradle, not for long this year, we just gotta try to get all the work done. The most remarkable thing about the haul out was the state of the anti-foul, we just had a light covering of slime and this was easily pressure washered off. We weren't expecting this and immediately rushed out and bought another tin of Seajet Emporer in white!

As we're out of the water we once again missed the New Year's Day race, which was a shame but you have to stop at one point. Sam and I went to watch from the stone pier and Weymouth Sailing Club though.

Draig takes line honours in NYD race

Winter Series Race 5 - there is no justice.

After the disappointing race last week it was good to get the bit back between our teeth and put in what we thought was a decent performance.

Our start was down the pin end keeping out of the way of the big boats and our air clear. Draig rolled over the top of us and the boat speed was down but we kept left as I was convinced that this was the only way to go. This was proved when we rounded the windward mark on the transom of Rattler and leaving the two sigmas behind us, a very rare occurrence.

The course was a triangle sausage with the first leg being deemed too shy for a kite hoist in the squally 30 odd knots of the low pressure system, the next leg was a little free-er but the following seas made us take the discretionary white sail route with only 5 on board and some lumpy following seas. We still got quite a few surfs though.

I guess we lost it on the upwind sections as punching back into these seas was a mistake but we followed the fleet in the poor visibiliy due to the rain. We soon realised and tacked back in but perhaps the damage had been done.

The downwing leg from D - J was pure joy. We had the touareg ayso plugged in so thought that we could get pretty deep on it in that wind. A steady 10 knots of boat speed was achieved with "turbo" boosts from the following squall. We were going so fast that we nearly overshot the mark and had to semi-mexican the takedown as I couldn't wait to gybe any longer. It actually was a very slick takedown when it really mattered.

We'd overtaken Snowgoose but not actually in the direction of the mark. She beat us over the line but not by enough. A shame to lose to Rattler by about 30 seconds corrected because we deserved better. The race was only about an hour though and we sailed back in into the teeth of a rain storm. Big winds coming our way this week so I hope FarrOut is tucked in on her mooring safe enough!

Dreadful Race

This week's race was horrible for us, we just could not seem to get her to go upwind. This was combined with me pushing my luck downwind sailing by the lee which ended in a massive chinese gybe. So that's another spinnaker sheet at the bottom of Weymouth bay. Last. Miserable.

Silly Achilles

That's the way

Oh how we smiled, we had dragged another into our web of ayso lunacy. Winter series race 3 was sailed in a dropping force 6 and once again we made a decent show of it. Stuart and Tracy had come back from Australia for a bit so Stuart was able to drive his own boat for a change.

The highlight for the race for me was overtaking the Achilles 9m "Rumrunner" flying the Touareg asymmetric and watching as they were scrabbling around on deck rigging a kite to hoist. We thought that Daddsie had been so upset by us zooming past that he was forcing a kite hoist in high winds at a shy angle. It was only as we went around the gybe mark, having dropped to white sail that we saw the full glory as they hoisted the Melges 24 spinnaker followed by shrieking as it filled and propelled them forward.

I look forward to more of those schenanigans. Daddsie told me later that they'd broken the spinnaker pole on their first hoist and had no choice other than to go for the ayso. Looked to me as though it fitted nicely although I think the drop was quite interesting without a proper tack line!

Winter Series 2

Great race last sunday and again seconds in it proving IRC is definately working for Weymouth's fleet racing. We were OCS and had to go back but other than that an exemplary race even though we were short of Darren. Scoline got into lots of trouble on the deep run and we were able to cut the corner on them by sailing right by the lee as they struggled to sort it out, Adam pulled a slick pole gybe out of the bag. Upwind speed good again in the moderate air.
Chuffed with the performance that gave us a sixth out of eight boats, might have been forth if we hadn't have been over the line. There's no bad teams out there in this series though - the least experience is probably on FarrOut!

You know I was talking about the big crash last week? Well it was a bit like the one at 0.56s in the video below, only we were probably going a bit slower! Still, next boat eh....:

Winter Series 1 and a very big crash

A late start for the first of the Winter series at Weymouth Sailing Club. Sunday was Remembrance Day and we no longer sail about in the bay observing a two minute silence. IRC start was at 1340 from a replacement committee boat.

Once again we were on the money at the start and long may it continue! We then set about dealing with the large seas that an easterly brings and an average of twenty knots. We chose a sailplan that seemed to give us plenty of drive through the big waves.

Yet again the asymmetric spinnaker stayed in the bag, the runs being deep and a 100 degree reach that had to be a white sail in those conditions. The first hoist was delayed by a trapped halyard but once the kite was up we were flying.

The next spinnaker leg was even deeper and with the large following seas, we screamed past Snow Goose at 10.4 knots only to get caught by a wave and chinese gybe in the most spectacular way, being held down for a long time. Once we got her back going the right way Darren's call suprised even me when we simply gybed back and carried on refilling the spinnaker and shooting off again.

A great performance by the little laser today awarded us a 4th with Excaliber (X99) winning it, followed by Foxed2 (Corby 29) and Wildfire (Beneteau First 36). We weren't far away though and I thought that our speed both upwind and downwind was excellent.

Autumn 6 of 6. RIP white kite!

A blustery 20+ northerly for the finale of the WSC autumn series. Once again the lovely North Sails No. 4 headsail was out of the bag and we were trying to put the reef in pre-start when I decided that we didn't haven't time to do it and went back to full main, probably the right call at the end of the day.

Another decent start and not bad beats, we could have done with one more on the rail. Things improved on the first spinnaker leg when our 9.5-10 knots of boat speed fairly hunted down the white sailing Sigma 33s. Unfortunately neither Sigma finished the race so we were left plugging away at the back of the fleet, trying to catch Rocket and Rattler.

A long deep run across the bay from B to I with a following sea did us lots of favours, but FarrOut was hard to hang onto! On the next spinnaker leg the flogging as we tried to get the old Owen Sails white kite under control in 30 knots put paid to our ambitions as we were left with edge tapes and an empty triangle as the old campaigner burst dying the noble death of a well used race sail. So much more fitting than mouldering in a shed covered in patches. Ho hum - time to get one of those mouldy, patched spinnakers out the shed for next week then...

So a 5th today and 6th overall in the series, finishing just half a point behind Scoline. We have been the only boat to sail all races without a retirement, our young crew are getting better all the time and when you look at the quality of the boats ahead of us I don't think it's been a bad show. It's been a fun series, looking forward to the winter series starting next week.

Fastnet 1979 on board Condor

Just read a really exciting story on the swedish blog Blur.se. Thought I'd share:
http://www.blur.se/2008/03/09/fastnet-1979-ombord-pa-condor/
Especially like it when they get the kite up in 45 knots, oh what a surprise...