Winsome’s Wednesday – 5th Day of Lendy Cowes Week

August 2, 2017

Today was another great day for Winsome and the Winsome crew, with another 1st, including both line honours and first on corrected time. We were delighted as the winning margin today, was our largest yet and we won by over 6 minutes despite the race being less than 2 hours.

The divers came this morning and scrubbed the boat. They checked the keel from our small grounding on Monday and thankfully everything is fine (just a small bit of gelcoat filler that needs to be replaced).

 

Today was quite windy, 20 to 25 knots and there was lots of rain! We started in the Eastern Solent near Portsmouth, on the committee boat starting line, down near Browndown. There was a small postponement and we started about 11.40am. We started near the committee boat end of the line and had a good start. There was an individual recall and we questioned ourselves for a few seconds, as to whether we may have been over the line. But both the instruments and our bowman, Floris said we were behind the line by about 0.5 boat lengths and then we saw another boat, that was further forward than us on the line, go back and restart.

The course today was nice, with 4 upwind and 3 download legs. The windward-leeward course was good for us. Harry and Boj made some good decisions on the first beat and picked us a fantastic layline for the first mark. We may have been a little bit lucky that the wind shifted left and we made the windward mark and almost all the other boats in the fleet, over stood the first windward mark. We were leading the fleet by a long margin at the first mark, by about 1.5 minutes and from there on, we began to extend.

We did an excellent hoist with the number 3 spinnaker and enjoyed our first downwind leg in about 20 knots of wind. We did not have to do any gybes on the first downwind leg and rounded the leeward mark well. We sailed about 1.6 mile beat and then another downwind. This time, we had one gybe on the run and we also decided to change from the number 3 jib to the number 2 jib, as the wind was down to 13 knots at times on this run. When we rounded the leeward mark, the number 3 helped us a lot and we increased our speed up the third beat. However the wind increased again, so when we rounded the windward mark, we decided to change back to the number 3 jib. This run was very enjoyable and Joost did an excellent job trimming the spinnaker. This turned out to be our final run of the day (although we were not expecting it to be), as they shortened the course at the next windward mark. On the final beat, we were getting ready to hoist the spinnaker for another run but then we noticed a shortened course flag flying. So we crossed the finish line and got another nice win today!

The crew work all day was excellent – Floris did a great job on the bow and Joost N. was excellent on the mast. Harry and Boj called some excellent laylines and did a great job on navigation and tactics today. Leen, Joost D. and DJ were great on trimming all the sails and Herman and Joost N. did an excellent job grinding today. We are all looking forward to 2 more races tomorrow and Thursday.

Here is a photo from today’s prize giving at the Island Sailing Club, This was for the 1^st place from yesterday’s race. This evening we will now head to the RORC Corinthian for the Fastnet Crew Party.

 

Tomorrow looks very windy but hopefully there will be racing!

 

 

 

Cheers!

 

Laura