 |
Nab Tower Race Reportshttp://www.flickr.com/photos/jogoffshoreyachtracing/ What a race, what a result! Onboard for the race we had usual crew of brother Peter and myself and guesting for the second inshore race this season Robin Lawton, previous owner of Moondog when the boat was known as Lazy Bear. We were surprised to see the green flag course given the forecasts we had been looking at on Friday showing seriously light winds from around lunchtime however, full marks to the race officers for keeping with the full course and the winds were perfect (for us anyway). The start seemed very simple with an easy reach down the line from the shore and hardened up and crossed at full speed close to the buoy, all made easy by the majority of the fleet being line shy and Longue Pierre being a little early and having to gybe around to start and consequently having little boat speed at the gun. The beat to the forts went exceptionally well. We tried to keep in the strongest tide, keep tacking to as little as possible, as it took so long to get back up to speed, and loosely cover the fleet from ahead. There was the odd moment when a rival headed us but not for long as by the forts we were still in the lead. Boat speed compared to rivals was great, we were sailing with a twisted main with the boom quite well off the centre line. Not bad for next to lowest rater and smallest boat! The leg to the Nab started as a beat but with a few miles left turned into a fetch. Tactic here was to keep in the Nab channel and thence strongest tide and take due note of the arrival and departure of shipping and tack to keep out of their way. Closing on the Nab Longue Pierre closed fast and it was touch and go whether we would have the pride of reaching it first but we reckon we had a nose in front at the Nab and as we had inside berth came away with a couple of lengths in hand. Spinnakers up and the run home was slow and uneventful other than having to suddenly reach up to clear a cross channel ferry bearing down on us. Plenty of gybing and searching for the strongest tide. Longue Pierre overtook us fairly quickly and seemed to be easing away from us. We quite expected more higher raters to get passed us but none did. Once back in the Solent we seemed to hold Longue Pierre and at the finish were less than two minutes behind. We knew the result would be good and as always were unsure of the position of lower raters behind us especially as the tide to the finish was building and as usual favours the lower rated boats. We were pretty sure we had the win and were absolutely amazed to find we had won with nearly twenty minutes to spare on the next boat. Especially pleasing was to achieve 10 minute leads over class 3 and 4 winners. We don’t think we’ll ever be able to get the boat going that fast again, still you never know! Many thanks to the race officers for calling the shots correctly and to the weather gods for perfect conditions. Report from Cerulean, Farr 395, Class 3:Perfect days sailing and not a plane in the sky! Rob started the day by almost falling overboard before we’d left the pontoon after slipping on the ice that had formed on deck overnight. The crew had gathered by 7am and we made our way out to the start coffees / teas in hand. Merlin had some poor soul up the mast (see video) doing maintenance. The start was always going to be a challenge with the strong tide threatening to push the brave over early. We had a clean start mid-line and were probably 4th over. Making the gap between Snowden and Princess Consort was our next challenge. If you went early you’d be crossing the fleet on port. If you went late you’d be fighting the tide to get back around Princess Consort. Night Owl had a blinder of a start and was able to cleanly tack the fleet on port. Old Mother Gun was looking good already. Once we rounded Princess Consort we were able to settle in with the fleet heading to the northern side. Floating Voter was pulling ahead and Old Mother Gun and Night Owl were not far behind. We crossed tacks with Night Owl several times before the forts and were often no more than a boat length apart. Genie was sailing very well and we swapped positions a few times. Substitute which was close to us (before retiring) in the Our tactics at the forts was not to pinch too high and let the tide push us east to Once around it was big kite up and off we go – time for lunch. The wind direction was not ideal for us but the light winds are Cerulean’s preference so we knew we would have a fairly good run home. We caught Substitue and were pulling away from Night Owl but were going to have to do a lot of work in very light winds to recover the handicap time we’d already lost to them. Old Mother Gun was now in our sights – just. To keep power in our asymmetric kite was had to sail more east than most boats. It was hardly surprising to see us amongst the J109s and a HOD 35 who also carried asymmetric kites. We made a complete mess of our gybe back to the fort when the spinnaker lazy sheet was found pinned under the headsail and bungee cords. Fortunately in 8kts of breeze most mistakes can be man-handled around. Our gybing angle was perfect (well done Nav team) and our boat speed jumped up to around 7.5kts for a while as we were able to power into the fort. We could see Old Mother Gun in softer winds closer to the island which allowed us to slip past them and into 2nd place (Floating Voter well ahead). Having learnt our lesson on the Once again we grabbed some video footage of the race which has been uploaded to YouTube. Boats featured are: Night Owl (Prima 38) Ayaya (Dehler 44) Tearaway Too (J120) S X Girl (X 37) J Fever (J120) In X Celsis (X 119) Substitute (Salona 37) Psipsina (HOD 35) Chaser (Sigma 33) With such a postcard day I’m sorry we did not get many more boats. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foRy1j2HWhM Thank you to the race committee. Report from Substitute, Salona 37, Class 3 Two of our crew who were going to join us on Saturday morning called to make some excuse that they could not join us due to a large cloud of dust stopping them from flying back from Zurich, what ever next? Leaves on the line will stop trains from London! (Joking apart I believe that rather a lot of people have found themselves in similar difficult circumstances and we hope that the dust problem goes away soon). The forecast for the race was light winds from the NE slowly veering to the SE and dropping. Unusually the forecast and the weather matched up fairly well and with a new boat, as yet untried in light airs we were not sure how she would behave. We enjoyed a good start getting off the line within the first three boats only to find that our back stay was catching on the roach of the mainsail, a common problem easily resolved, however it slowed down our first five or six tacks firmly putting us back into the middle of the fleet. Once we had settled down Substitute proved that she is no slouch in light winds and was keeping pace with the rest of the class 3 fleet. The wind held all the way to Nab Tower and once round the tower we were able to set our brand new light weight kite, it’s amazing when a new kite goes up for the first time and you realise that it was a good job that we were not too drunk when choosing the colour scheme. Still the wind held for us and with the new tide we made good time back towards the finish line. By staying in the tide we also kept in the wind and hauled a few boat lengths in from OMG, unfortunately we needed to be an equal number of boat lengths ahead of OMG to beat them on handicap and this was not going to happen in the time it was going to take to get to the finish line. Having crossed the line we headed into Cowes to enjoy a pint at the Island Sailing Club and a chance to meet up with some of the other crews. Every one agreed that it had been a fantastic day out on the water and that we are looking forward to the next race to St Vaast. Thank you to all of the race officers and every one who took part.
|
|
|
 |
|
||
 |