What a great weekend. Friday's delivery to Cowes was a blast; Rattler, Manana and FarrOut left Weymouth together and the two MG335s Tumbarumba and Crewcut were just in front. We had a lovely sail with a powered up dead deep kite run across Christchurch bay and plenty of surfs. When we turned the corner at the needles in about 23 kts and big waves the inevitable happened in the gybe and FarrOut had a little laydown, well quite a big lay down really.
It's even more exciting when you've got spiky rocks just on your right hand side. We thundered down the Solent, and as we dropped the sails outside the entrance to the Medina river at Cowes I made the mistake of not checking that we didn't have any lines in the water whilst the engine on. So, once more I've been swimming in my pants in the Medina.....after I cut the rope away we were fine.
The race on Saturday was a classic. It was blowing 30 kts from the south west so the beat to the needles was hard on everybody. I was driving so didn't get so wet but I was glad to get off the line as the start sequence was crazy, we were reaching backwards and forwards pre-start at 8 knots with hundreds of other boats. Our start was good and it took until Newtown river at least before Rattler caught up with us. We waved at the other Laser 28 entered in our class, Nemesis, only to watch as 20 seconds later she was T-boned by an Impala I think. Horrible.
By the needles, Harry the extra crewman was quite seasick but God bless him stayed on the rail. We turned the corner and hoisted the ayso for a charging blast down to St. Cats. Darren recorded the best boatspeed ever record of 13.8 kts. At St. Catherine's we had 3 being sick out the transom and so we didn't go for the symmetrical spinnaker in the deeper run. We kept it safe but still at about 9-10 knots and didn't break anything or anybody. FarrOut needed to go faster though and so I was pleased when the gybe location arrived and we could put the ayso back up for another scream up to Bembridge Ledge bouy.
We were discussing later on why it is that in a race like this big cruising boats close the distance with boats like ourselves and Rattler who are clearly on the edge of control all the time? Racing rules aside, I'd be keeping out the bl**dy way! But we didn't hit anything although we saw a lot of carnage, especially in the multi-hull fleet who seemed to be readily turning upside down.
Another beat along the top of the island balancing the fine line of cheating tide and not going aground and it was a successful race over. Hopefully Stephen has got some video footage.
Sunday's delivery back was fun as the dense fog and no wind meant that all your yachtmaster training had to come out. It's always different around the corner and as we rounded St Aldhelm's head back into Weymouth bay the fog started clearing and the breeze kicked in and we spinnakered back home. Exhausted but exhilirated.
So down to the numbers...there were 3 Laser28s in the race Zorra from Parkstone in the ISCRS class and ourselves and Nemesis from the Exe in IRC. I'm gutted that could be taken out of the race like that, it could so easily happen when there's so many boats racing and I expect that they had a long delivery just to get to the start line. Anyway:
FarrOut Zorra
Elapsed Time 08:31:46 08:38:18
Corrected Time 07:38:33 08:33:38
We were 16/32 finishers in class IRC 3C, Zorra 16/42 finishers.
Overall results IRC:
FarrOut 197/465
Rattler 222/465
Overall results ISCRS:
Zorra 272/664
Manana 242/664
The different rating systems don't make the result credible and Mark from Zorra said that they were 11 minutes late for the start....The most interesting thing is the closeness of the elapsed time to go around the Island. The hulls must be pretty similar but the boats are set-up very differently. We also had totally different sail plans for the weather Zorra with 2 reefs in the mainsail and us with full main and No. 4 headsail.
Great Stuff, oh and well done to Snow Goose the Sigma 33 as well who were in our class and beat us. I think we can be proud, the boats ahead of us in class were mostly Sigmas which are great boats and hard to beat, and the very hot quarter tonners who are also incredibly well sailed.
Submitted on 28th June 2011