Cruiser race 2nd Oct

2 Oct 2016

A nice bright day today though the gentle northerly wind was a bit cool. Susi was with me, we attempted to back out of the berth but got stuck aground on a bit of shallow mud behind me - that's never happened before! 20 turns on the keel handle to wind it up a bit, and a burst of reverse on the outboard and we were through and out OK.

I have been talking to sail-makers about a new mainsail and they'd all looked at photos of Elsa and noted we hadn't got a luff downhaul properly rigged. We took a moment in the river today, after the usual mainsail hoisting, to rig a bit of line through an eye in the main and tweak the luff edge down tight.

Five cruisers motored out into the sunshine about 1100 and the race officer, noting the northerly wind, found it hard to set a course giving us a beat into wind on the first leg. We'd all be up the beach. So he set a line start with a reach out to the weather station as the first leg. This meant a bit of a tricky start especially as some of the others flew at the line under spinnaker! But we got a good start around the middle of the group and away we went.

The first two boats were ahead in the distance very quickly but, like in the last two races, we found ourselves close to Cabre and we had a good chase out to the weather station. The wind was around F2 with a few bursts of F3 and some changes in direction. Despite Cabre's chute we were just ahead and rounded the weather station for a closehauled leg to the Omar mark. We drew still further ahead and we seemed to be lucky with the wind shifts and be in the right place when the gusts came. So we were at least 15 mins ahead of Cabre as we went around the second mark and tried to beat back to the finish line.

The leading two boats were finished and heading back to the clubhouse before we got anywhere near the line but we were very pleased to cross in 3rd place, Cabre and Sea Lady were well behind us and both retired. Our elapsed time was 2 hours 26 minutes as we finished around 2pm.

A very good sail and we hope to get some more in before the season ends!

Nick Clare took a photo as we came in



Race officer David Robinson

Start: Start 1, Finishes: Place
RankBoatClassSailNoHelmNameAMSElapsedCorrectedPoints
1Dedicated DancerLimbo 69943YDavid Robinson0.8261;48;031;29;151.0
2DancerHunter Delta8625YDick Holden0.8461;48;331;31;502.0
3ElsaSeal 22122Alistair Tyrrell0.7972;26;541;57;053.0
4CabreHunter Horizon 23130Ron Priest0.751RET6.0
4Sea LadySeal 85076David Bamber0.730RET6.0


Sailwave Scoring Software 2.19.8
www.sailwave.com





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