AAM CW 2014 – Day 6

August 7, 2014

Today was a day of waiting! Winsome was on the water at 9am to get ready for hopefully a better day of racing, after Black Wednesday yesterday, when we got an OCS (On course side). After yesterday, we decided to develop a checklist of things we should do every morning, when we go out on the water, to make sure we focus before the start and help us prepare in a systematic way for every race.

 

Winsome’s Pre-Start Checklist:

1. Check the headings on the instruments are working accurately (we have had some issues with this earlier in the week)

2. Sail upwind and check the headings on port and starboard tack to see if the wind is oscillating and which way the wind is shifting

3. Check wind direction a few times before the start, to check how the wind is shifting

4. Hoist the spinnaker

5. “Ping” both ends of the starting line (need to check that the committee does not move the line after we “ping” both ends)

6. Sail through the starting line to verify the “pings” are accurate

7. Check line bias by sailing down the line and comparing vs the wind direction

8. Practice start to test where we want to start on the line

9. Look at the fleets that start in front of us (if any) to see which end is biased for those fleets and also check which side of the beat is favoured

 

Winsome did some of our checklist but not all, as the wind was very light. The wind went up and down between 0 and 5 knots all morning. But unfortunately it never went above 6 knots. We spoke to many other boats in our class and they asked us, what happened yesterday. Many of them were very nice and complemented us on our nice start and nice first beat yesterday. Unfortunately, we had to tell them that the start was a little bit too nice and we were OCS yesterday!

 

After 5 hours of waiting, at 2pm, the race committee decided to cancel the race for the day. This was a shame, as we were hoping to have a good race today and we also hoped that the discard (ability to not have to count our worst result) would also be applied after 6 races. Winsome returned ashore and we went to the Cowes Yacht Haven. Boj maintains the pink t-shirt today, as there was no racing but we wonder who will be the final winner of the pink t-shirt tomorrow. Also, will the winner of the pink t-shirt tomorrow have to keep it until Cowes week next year or does Boj now own it having won it on 3 days?

 

The Winsome crew is looking forward to a nice evening of lobster at champagne with the Salvo and Yes crews. We have one final race tomorrow and we really hope that we will have more wind tomorrow! Unfortunately, Winsome is now 10th overall, due to having to count the OCS (29 points) from yesterday. However, below we have shown what the points would look like with one discard applied. The results are very tight and when the discard will hopefully be applied tomorrow (assuming we do get a race), positions 4 to 9 are only separated by 7 points. We are looking forward to hopefully wind, sunshine and a great final result tomorrow to hopefully enable us to have a good overall result!

 

Laura

 

Position	Boat Name	Sat	Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Total Points	Discard (Worst Race)	Total Points with 1 Discard Applied	Position with Discard
1	STRAIT DEALER	2	2	1	2	2	9	2	7	1
4	ZARAFA	1	1	2	1	29	34	29	5	2
2	ELAINE	3	3	7	8	1	22	8	14	3
3	XCITABLE	7	5	10	4	6	32	10	22	4
10	WINSOME	4	12	3	5	29	53	29	24	5
5	EXTRA DJINN	8	8	6	10	3	35	10	25	6
6	ALARIS	12	7	4	11	4	38	12	26	7
8	MALICE	11	15	5	3	8	42	15	27	8
7	MUSKOX	10	10	8	6	5	39	10	29	9
9	KING LOUIE	6	6	16	7	14	49	16	33	10
11	JIN TONIC	15	9	14	9	7	54	15	39	11
12	HOT RATS	29	13	9	13	10	74	29	45	12
13	COMEDY OF ERRORS	14	11	11	29	11	76	29	47	13
15	UPSTART	9	29	15	15	9	77	29	48	14
16	JOS OF HAMBLE	5	4	12	29	29	79	29	50	15
14	NIFTYDRIFTER	17	17	17	12	13	76	17	59	16
18	JUNO	19	29	13	17	12	90	29	61	17
19	MAGIC	16	14	19	16	29	94	29	65	18
17	MOSTLY HARMLESS	20	18	20	14	15	87	20	67	19
21	FREGAT	18	19	18	18	29	102	29	73	20
20	KAT RIX	21	22	23	19	17	102	23	79	21
23	GIRLSFORSAIL.COM 1	29	23	21	20	16	109	29	80	22
22	GLADEYE	23	21	22	21	19	106	23	83	23
24	WHITE CLOUD IX	13	16	29	29	29	116	29	87	24
25	ARCTURUS OF LYMINGTON	29	25	24	22	18	118	29	89	25
26	OCEAN VENTURE	22	29	29	23	20	123	29	94	26
27	RAMPANT	29	20	29	24	29	131	29	102	27
28	LISS MARLIN	29	24	29	29	29	140	29	111	28