Alistair Tyrrell

13 June 2015 Watching the forecast over the last few days I'd decided that this wasn't the day to take Elsa to the Owers Buoy. I know I said that last year but with a F5-6 breeze expected, I wasn't keen. So when Ron emailed me to say he needed a crew to work alongside himself and Dani I quickly volunteered. Cabre is a Hunter Horizon 23, only a foot bigger than mine but a bigger boat all round in terms of volume and equipment and stability, twin keels, and a self-tacking jib at the front which is relatively smaller than Elsa's genoa. The day was bright and the wind was indeed around F5 from the SW and a fair swell was running. The trick with the Owers Race is that each skipper decides for himself when to set off, the intention being to go round Owers just as the tide turns. Owers is just over 10 miles away and today's course was set as simply Owers and back, no need to wander around outside Pagham like we all did last year! We left the berth about 1015 to go ou

7th June 2015 A sunny Sunday with light winds forecast, Stuart and Dominik and I left the berth around 1.15 for the 2pm start. A fair group of boats turned out, about 7 in total, including some new competitors. Once we got out to sea we found a bit more wind than expected, a good F2 from the SW, a nice flat sea with warm sunshine. We were quite pleased with the start but we do need to work on it as we seem to lose a minute or so as we're not being aggressive enough when we cross behind the lead pathfinder boat at the gate start. Never mind, we were well away beating to the first mark to the south. The usual suspects were fastest but we found ourselves fairly close to a couple of others in the midfield. Dominik was on the helm most of the way with Stuart on the foredeck and I was trying to manage the genoa and main sheets. Dominik isn't shy and cheerfully called starboard on the commodore's yacht forcing him into an early tack as we approached the mark! We were around ah