Cruiser race 7th June

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 ahead of the other midfielders and onto a broad reach to the second mark. Looking back we began to see spinnakers going up on Free n Easy and Johanna behind us and we thought we'd get overtaken but we kept ahead, third on the course with the two fastest boats well away in the distance but we seemed to be best of the rest. This was most gratifying and we continued to pull ahead round the second and third mark and then a hard beat back to the finish line.


Faithfully recording our time on the stopwatch at 1 hr 37 mins 38 secs, we motored back in good spirits. Third on the course, we found we were fourth place on handicap out of a fleet of 7. Stuart fetched the food he'd forgotten to bring aboard and we sat around in the sunshine watching the other boats returning. Dominik did really well on the helm and we'd had a great time.



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