Cowes Week Day 5; WINSOME D-Day

August 4, 2010

Before we started everything looked fine. A nice 20 – 25 kt Westerly was blowing. The start was towards the West. “YES” and “FEVER” started at the committee boat end. We made a port approach. Although we would have loved to sail slightly more towards the Committee boat, the field on starboard forced us on a starboard tack, and we had to tack out. We started 100 meters South of the Committee boat on a beat towards West Lepe. The first boats to hit the North shore did really well.It was hard for us to get the right speed into the boat, so we arrived late at Lepe Spit. The majority of the fleet was in front of us. We prepared for a fight from the back to the front. In this we did not succeed. We were tacking along the Nothern shore and decided to tack out into the tide towards West Lepe, our mark. The fact that we just didn’t make it, was the beginning of our downfall.We did not lay the mark, decided to tack back, ducked another boat, tacked with the next, failed to make the mark agian, tacked out again, jammed the Genoa sheet, and so on… We lost a lot of time and places on our main opponents there.What happened next was  us being at the back of the fleet, willing to get back.In the next episode we did a couple of things well and a couple of things not so well. We had a perfect Genoa peel form the II to the I at the next beat towards “Elephant”.  On the crossing form  “e-digital research” to “Aquaspec” the skies turned grey and we actually saw a wind hose on the Northern shore. A big gust crossed the Solent from the North to the South. We saw a lot of kites tearing up, an open 60 with its keel pointing in the sky and an J-109 with its mast top in the water.Over defensive we took our Genoa I down. The wind crossed, a new breeze kicked in and we had to make a tack to the mark. Genoa I up, and a we got off again. We had another beat towards the “Peter’s and May” mark and a fetch towards the Finish. In the end we came 8th on corrected time (25 mins behind “YES” who had their second class win).

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A strange day with al lot of mixed feelings in the end…

Post by Boj | August 4, 2010 |

1 Comment

  1. Hello Winsome

    I am following your progress and wish you better luck in the last few races !!

    Marleen Johnson
    old crew member

    by Marleen | 05 Aug 2010 | 20:38