Lendy Cowes Week 2017 – Day 2

July 31, 2017

Following yesterday’s excellent result, we were all keen on getting another good result in today. Whereas yesterday was a day of little breeze, winds for today were forecasted to be between 18-22 knots. Our start was on the fixed line at the Bramble end, near the Williams Shipping buoy.

It was indeed breezy out on the Solent and we decided on starting with the no. II Genoa to ensure we would have sufficient power through the steep chop around the starting area and up the first four (!) mile beat along the main land shore. We started slightly late but with good speed and as planned in the third closest to the pin end, the plan was to tack over as quickly as possible and tack up the shore near Lepe Spit for tidal relief.

Unfortunately, we were pinned down by one of our competitors for the first couple of minutes before we could tack over towards the shore. This is where the real race began; by superior boat speed and positioning ourselves for the small left handshifts we steadily gained on the fleet and on the leading boats: Jaywalker, Induljence, Hakuna Matata and Jet. We swapped tacks with these boats on the main land shore, trying to get as close to shore as we dared. Unfortunately, in one of our port tack towards the shore we just passed in front of Induljence. Despite us being able to easily cross Induljence’s bow they claimed to have been forced to bear off to prevent a collision and protested us. Although we did – and still do – believe we were clear and did not infringe the rules we did not want to take the risk of a protest and decided to take the prescribed penalty of 1% of our sailed time.

The first upwind leg was followed by a short reach across the Solent were we passed Induljence by flying our no. III kite. This leg was followed by a short upwind leg along the island shore. During this leg it became apparent that the reinforcement patch on the Genoa near the leach was coming off and that there was a risk in tearing the leech line out. Nonetheless we sailed fast during this leg and passed Jaywalker.

During the next very short downwind leg Floris and Joost N quickly went to work to come up with a temporary fix for the no. II Genoa so we could keep it up for the rest of the race. They did a great job in finishing this and getting the sail back up in time for the downwind mark.

However, due to the violence the Genoa is exposed to in every tack on WINSOME, the repair started to come off in the next upwind leg so we had to consider alternatives. Doing a sail change upwind against the tide is less than ideal and we would have been slightly underpowered on the no. III jib. We therefore decided to try and sit this leg out on this sail and try and spare it as much as possible in the tacks. This paid off and we managed to keep the sail in tact for another reach across the Solent.

To avoid the risk of tearing the no. II Genoa to pieces we decided to switch to the no. III jib at the end of the reach/beginning of the last upwind leg.After rounding the mark we sailed towards the shore on starboard tack with two headsails up (the no. III jib inside the Genoa II). Once we tacked over to port we were able to take down the Genoa and store it.

We did really well on this leg and managed to pull away from our competitors. The final leg was a very long deep water run with the tide running with us towards the finish. We really pushed for all we had and put the no. II kite on and the Ruby staysail. Although there were frequent strong gusts we managed to stay in control and extend our lead on Induljence.

In the end we finished after 3 hours, 39 minutes and 43 seconds, just enough to have the exact same corrected time as Indulgence (even after taking our penalty) and thus another bullet (albeit shared).

Two bullets is a splendid way of starting of the week and we will work hard to earn more results in line with the past two days.

Watch this space.

All the best,

Joost

Post by Boj | July 31, 2017 |

1 Comment

  1. Congrats again! Shared first, what are the odds. Good luck on Monday! Keep up the good work.

    by Hidde kroon | 31 Jul 2017 | 13:39