Alistair Tyrrell

31 August 2016 I'm probably not going to lift the boat out this winter, will leave it till next year when I understand we're dredging the marina so we'll all have to come out. However, with some time off work and fair weather, I decided to beach Elsa on the club slipway so I could wash and paint the bottom. I took some time over preceding days to dig out the beaching legs and plan how to do this. Georgia came to help me and the only complication was that we found some other club guys also beaching the committee boat for urgent prop repairs. But we all fitted in. Elsa's legs are wooden with a single bolt that goes through a hull fitting, and guy ropes fore and aft from the foot of each leg. The existing bolts were rusted so I worked them out and bought shiny new ones. On the day these turned out to be 5mm too short so some spares had to be found from the club tool-shed but with me aboard Elsa, Georgia in a RIB beside me, and assorted club members to throw ropes...

7 Aug 2016 Due to concerns about silting and channel depth at Brighton, the annual cruiser race to Brighton became a race to Shoreham instead. Georgia was with me and we set off at 1200 Saturday keen to have a good race by starting as early as we could. Behind, we saw the other six boats leaving the river close behind us. As usual Georgia was well prepared with several bags of picnic. There was a nice westerly F3 so with full sail we crossed the start line at 1233 and headed for Shoreham. The strong breeze kept the sails full but the following sea made Elsa a bit tricky to handle, she wasn't stable enough to goosewing. Behind us the fleet spread out, some with spinnakers, some falling back. We found ourselves slightly too far south so gybed around towards the shore for a few minutes near Worthing then back on course east. Hard work but a pleasant trip and we found the finish point (one of Sussex YC's marks) and completed the race at 1424. The genoa fur...