Ready for the 2012 J P Morgan Round the Island Race

Foregoing racing last night we put some final preparations together before next weekend's race. Steve and I dived the boat in the lovely warm waters of Weymouth Bay and polished her bottom nicely. I was surprised by the amount of barnacles on there.

We then went for a sail and launched the new kite held out there with the new pole. All very satifactory. The crispness and slipperyness really help out in those gybes. Seemed fast but I guess we need to line up with some other boats with it.




Delivery to Cowes on friday is looking a wet and windy affair at the moment. Joy.

IRC division 3C - not a division I'd want to be in given the choice. With the Quarter Ton Cup running this week in Cowes all the quarter tonners are in this division. We will have to be happy with our IRC overall position, because we stand little chance of getting enough distance between us and those rocket ships with pop star crews!

New S2 Kite

Just taken delivery of a very crispy new kite from Ullman Sails. We felt that we were undergunned downwind especially in the light so as all our old kites seemed to be exploding it's good to have something new.




Not that this weekend's Round the Island race looks as though it's going to be a light airs affair.

This spinnaker is the same area as our present rating and we have a longer pole to fly it with, the STL length having increased with our bowsprit addition.



I was up till midnight on friday splicing the bridles on that!

Can I interest anyone in this?

Farr 400 'Ichi Ban' doing 20 knots+ from Airborne Agency on Vimeo.

Monday 2 Race 2

One aspect of a true dictator's reign of terror is control of the media.

There will be no report of my spell on the foredeck in this race other than school children will be taught that it was a glorious episode in our shared history resulting in a marvellous victory.

Spring Long Distance

The Spring Long Distance is one of our traditional courses so it might have been a long distance in a Weymouth Falcon but is not a long haul in a racing yacht. Basically up and down covering the bay and Portland Harbour.

Yachts entered this year were diverse from the fast: Arcsine - Arcona 370, Foxed Again - Corby 29; the medium (Us)and the slow, Spinaway - Hunter Medina. We had to watch as the two faster boats sailed away from us.

Originally we were going to sail double handed but we invited Iain Jones along as well seeing though it was a nice day. We were third by 38 seconds corrected!

Not Concerned about Winning?

We don't really mind when we don't do well on FarrOut and we're not that bothered about handicaps, the thrill of the ride and close racing is what gets our blood up.

I've seen this for sale and it looks a whole lot of fun for £16K

http://gweekquay.co.uk/index.php?option=com_brokerage&id=92&view=boat&Itemid=34


http://yachts.apolloduck.co.uk/feature.phtml?id=239384

Monday 2 - race 1

This is a series that we're not fully crewed for like thursdays. Looking at the forecast earlier in the week I thought it would be nice just for Steve and I to double hand the race. A bit busy on short course evening racing maybe so it was good that Alice was able to join us as well. She seemed to enjoy herself even though she wanted to do anything but be in the middle of the boat with all the strings, so that's exactly where we put her!

It seems to have been blowing and raining forever, quel estival? We were maybe too conservative to start off with a No. 4 headsail and a reef prompting comments about our main halyard being stuck. The No. 4 seemed to be doing much better though on a "2 holes clear" setting on the jib track.

Bill Barker was OD and set a triangle sausage course which meant we set up with starboard pole asymmetric for our first bear away hoist, unfortunately the port sheet clip popped off on the hoist (dodgy bowman) so we had to hurriedly drop, clip on, re-hoist and gybe at the wing mark. This went well but as we swiped the stern of Evisa, who was white sailing, competitive Phil indicated that he'd defend and we ended up below and alongside upto the leeward mark. Rubbish, but gave us an opportunity to hurl abuse. Coming into the leeward mark we pulled off a shake reef out/headsail up/ spinnaker drop in about 20 metres of water which was fun.

The next kite leg was deep so we selected the symmetrical and carried out a nice gybe without any real problems.

It was a fun race but we were fourth out of four....Nice to be driving again though.

A photo from the monday before last when we led the fleet into the leeward mark. Nice:



I love seeing all that lot behind us.

Alice Helm's Deep

WSC's Fanfare trophy is one of the year's crew races. In fact the other two used to be Ladies races until will made them "non-gender specific" this year. We thought that we'd get a lady to helm anyway, mostly because we felt really bad for getting her to step off the boat for the light airs race the week before!

Alice did a sterling job with a deserved fourth place, by the end of the race you wouldn't have thought that she hadn't helmed a race in FarrOut before and she was telling us all what to do! The three boats ahead had much more experienced helms.



L to R: Jack,Adam, Stu, Steve and Alice

Stuck in a Calm

Disco Dave took a nice picture of FarrOut on thursday before last sitting there in no wind at all. Thanks Dave

Monday 1 Race 6

We managed to get out for a monday night race this week. Steve, Stu and myself were joined by Darren in a rare appearance and we picked up Steve Fraser off a pontoon as we headed out the harbour. This turned out to be a strong team, which was what was required after we had a cracking front row start and selected the correct side of the first, short beat, this put us in a commanding position and we found ourselves leading the fleet of faster boats into the leeward mark. No mistakes were possible.

As always Folio pipped us at the last. We had a great tussle with Scoline though and were in front of them most of the race and had a photo finish. A great race and it was smiles all round.

New Traveller

Ooh...Harken.

FarrOut retains the YCW IRC Spring Series

Although the entries this year were low. Farr Out defeated the Beneteau 36.7 Wildfire to take the IRC spring series for the second year running.

Sunday morning started off light with clouds showing that a sea breeze would arrive, swinging the breeze right and building to superb sailing conditions in the bay. As we were sharing the bay with pre-olympic match racing and about 500 kids qualifying for GBR in the oppies, the race officer Derek Abbot set two races of windward/leewards over by the cliffs. Unfortunately only three boats turned out for the line: Wildfire, us and Effusion (Elan 295)the only entry in PY, Orion having been damaged in last week's storm.


At the club it appeared that we only had three of us Alice, Adam and me. Not enough to sail the boat effectively against fully crewed opposition. Luckily Nick Sharp, my old skipper from Pink Stink and Marionette days was available so the helm was given to him so that I could work the middle of the boat. This was a great solution to our problem and with Alice on mainsheet and Adam at the bow we were all ready to sail the boat well. This we must have done because we get to keep that big glass bowl again.


Now we've just got to win IRC autumn and winter series.......


Congratulations everyone.

Old Dutch in the Dark

Thursday 1 racing has become an all PY affair as for various reasons the two or three IRC boats available are racing with the W class for this series. I must admit having more boats racing together is fun. Last night's race was sailed in fairly light winds prompting Stephen to request the presence of a genoa. I was expecting another sail to arrive but he brought with him "Old Dutch", a sail that I'd forgot that we even possessed. It's probably 20+ years old and was made by Hagoort sails in Holland. This sail caused much hilarity as Adam the bowman had never had to tack a genoa before and ended up in some entanglement:

He was overzealous at one point dragging the cloth down the side of the boat and ended up "hiking" off the leeward guardwires holding onto a sheet and having to be rescued by Steve and Jack. A chaotic race that was probably too long for the conditions saw us sailing on into dark with lights on. The follow my leader instinct meant that most of the fleet went to the wrong windward mark, then the wrong gybe mark. After this we bailed out and changed course for the correct windward mark. There were 3 finishers, Crazeology and Evisa who had both sailed the right course and us who had doubled back. Here's the view we had of the committee boat as we came to the finish line:

The great thing was that with no traveller (new Harken one on order) and a 20+ year old sail we were excellently fast out of the start. Well done team for a funny and unusual race.

Boomkicker

Still can't get a photo on that Laser 28 forum!

Instructional

On board video sems to be getting more prevalent as the technology allows it. There's been some great stuff coming out of Spi Ouest 2012, with the J111 team Blur from Sweden getting video out before the professionals.

This one below is from Noel Racine's JPK 10.10 Foggy Dew, a regular in RORC racing. Anyway it's great to be onboard a well sailed fast boat, you can always learn stuff.

Check out 1.45, sacrificing height for speed; 4.02 nice windward drop; 5.00 driving away from dirty air, speed up and tack away; 7.00 wide mark rounding and sharp cut in for the inside line.