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Highlights:
Screaming downwind being chased by dolphins. Rob, hiking out like nobody's done before. A balanced and fast Jackal in high wind conditions (thank goodness we didn't try to fly the bitch).
Downers:
Our first start; Skipper daydreaming and/or hungover
Result:
2nd on PYR and PER for both races. A result that's 'a bit more like it'.
Lessons Learnt:
Make sure people don't notice your crew hiking out with bodies outside the lifelines, or fit trapeze lines, or slacken the lifeline so they don't have to. Learn the rules of racing better and find legal loopholes to work with.
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Pictured: Guest crewmember, Rob, relaxes in the cockpit after the racing's over, smiling happily once more.
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Race 3 and 4 Spring Series. Short inshores. Friday 7th May
Wind 17 - 25 with gusts of more, Strong wind warning. North West.
Hamish, our Bowman has fled the country for three weeks, so that leaves us a man short out on the water, and Freddy (our reservist) is sailing his own boat today. But we're in luck. Bob has produced a stand-in, Rob, a large, 6-foot-something, solid guy, who's about to learn all about hiking, life on the rail and how to catch all the splashy bits to keep his skipper dry. It's just as well it's blowing a bit today - as we would have to chuck him overboard in light air. Anyway after a 09:00 briefing we get out for a start at 10:00.
Pre-start, Jackal feels good today. We practice beats and tacks to get Rob in the groove (and settle my nerves!) and cruise around waiting for the start when for some completely inexplicable reason I sail us miles from the start with less than 2 minutes to go. Stupid me. It's gusty conditions now, up at around 20 knots or more and building, and after a nervous "Oh my God, we're rounding-up straight into West Pole (a very solid fixed beacon)" we cross the line second last. But we're sailing a different side of the course from the fleet and by the top mark we are first. Around this and a reach to East Bouy. We're hammering along drawing further ahead with every minute, full main up while others have reefed. Rob is proving extremely useful on the rail. Jackal just sits flat (well, most of the time). Turning and gybing we head downwind to West Pole, cursing the lack of Hamish and therefore the expertise to fly the bitch. But the course is too short to risk calamity with a visitor, and we're pulling almost 7 knots...
Around West Pole we're back on a beat and stand on to the port side of the course before tacking to the weather mark. Not too soon and not too late which proves a good strategy, gaining us many boatlengths. In the gusts Jackal rounds up slightly clawing metres of upwind position on a very tight layline. We're vang sheeting the main with backstay at maximum. The luff of the sail has depowered nicely with the leach half drawing well. We're lee-rail under mostly - past the chainplates, and about a couple of feet of deck is submerged - but we're balanced and cranking along. I put thoughts of broken gear out of my mind, concentrating on the Green'n'White beacon that is our top mark today..
The next leg is a downwind to the bottom mark and then back up to repeat, with a reach to East Bouy and a run to the finish transit at West Pole where we record our time just before 11:00. We're far enough ahead on the others, except possibly that Seal, so head back to the Club for lunch. Rob doesn't look too terrified. Silly sod doesn't realise how close we came to breaking the boat in half and being swept away by giant rogue waves...
It's chicken curry for lunch, though I opt for a pie instead - a slightly safer option. Ken goes off to check the wind. "17 knots out there and we're on" he says, so we grumble back down to the marina to get ready for a 14:00 start. There's a lot more whitecaps out there now.
This morning's course was 'triangle, sausage, triangle' in shape. This afternoon, just to make things interesting we're racing 'sausage, triangle, sausage' around the same marks. The wind is well over 25 knots now, so the girls labour to put in a reef, which they manage very nicely. After a much better start and calling starboard on Polly (tried for the whole fleet but they slipped through) the race is much like that of the morning and we finish again in under an hour.
At de-briefing we find that wev'e finished 2nd in the morning and 2nd equal with Yella-Belly in the afternoon. On Personal we also have two 2nds. Who came first? That Seal of course, with a massive difference in corrected time to the rest of the fleet. Anyway, not a bad result for us. Mike is slightly quieter today, although he manages a short burst of heckling. Race day just wouldn't be the same without these verbal rituals.
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