The first racing day of Lendy Cowes Week 2017

July 29, 2017

After two days of preparation WINSOME and her crew were ready to start the Lendy Cowes Week 2017. This year around 8000 sailors will participate. We are participating in IRC Class 5 along with twenty-one competitors.

Harry, Leen, Laura, Dirk Jan, Joost D., Boj, Joost N., Floris and Herman only want to improve the result of last year, as easy as that. Last year we ended up being second in our class, so you can do the math of what the goal for this year will be.

At Saturday morning the start was at 11.20am. The start line was placed near mark 44, in the east of the Solent.

We had a clear start, not as planned at the middle of the line, but at the pin end. Nevertheless we were just below the line in clear air. Unfortunately for us there was a general recall. This remined us all from last year… A little recap what happened back then, a great first start combined with a general recall. The black flag was hoisted and during the second start we were over the line. With a black flag hoisted this means you are directly disqualified. The worst start you can imagen.

Back to this morning, at the second start we were bailed out by surrounding boats and did not make the line in time, the tide was ripping along, so we needed to gybe out, not an ideal start at all. However then the big relief came, a second general recall. Lucky us.

So we focussed again and prepared for the third start. This start was perfectly executed and we were 0.6 boat length below the line at the gun with clear air. In Dutch we say: “drie keer is scheepsrecht”, so the racing could begin!

The weather forecast was 8-12 kn of wind in the morning, decreasing in the afternoon combined with rain, a lot of rain. As our British friend would say: “it was raining cats and dogs”. The wind was shifty all day and at some point during the race dropped below 6kn, for who have sailed on Winsome or read the blog, know this is an absolute nightmare for WINSOME. Luckily most of the time the wind was slightly higher.

The first upwind leg was against the tide and we were fifth to round the upwind mark. A nicely executed spinnaker hoist helped us in gaining on the boats in front.

The second kite ride was a tight reach, with a wind angle of around 90 degrees. The flat water in the lee of the island shore helped us in just holding the Spi 1. With three J/97 in our class we swapped constantly the honour to the lead the fleet.

At the last leg towards the finish Joost D. spotted ELBABE a Bulk Carrier of 200m coming from Liverpool and heading for the port of Southampton. At that point it was clear that we could just or just not pass ELBABE in front. The pilot vessel was already waiting to escort her safely around Bramble bank into the port of Southampton. We had a race within a race to sail as high and quickly as possible to the pilot vessel to (just) cross her bow, this saved us a big wind shadow of ELBABE and by crossing in front we sail straight to the finish line. We were the only boat of our class achieving this and gave us the opportunity to extend our lead. Which resulted after sailing 3 hours, 33 minutes and 28 second cross the Squadron line as first boat of IRC Class 5. The “high fives” were heard onboard WINSOME as we had a line honor combined with the gun!

For the next couple of minutes the pressure on board was felt, do we have enough margin on our competitors…? The answer was YES! WINSOME became first on corrected time in our class today!! A great start of the week!

 

Will be continued.

 

With kind regards,

Herman