Cowes Week, Day 3

August 5, 2013

Weather predictions were rather off. First it was expected to blow very hard during the night, but later the front was expected to pass during the early afternoon.

When we went out with a nice south south-westerly wind blowing at about 12 tot 18 knots. The wind was shifting all the time and it was very gusty. It would stay for that during the day. It was only after the finish that the wind died and the rain took over…

Due to our starting issues on day 1 and 2 we decided to stay out of the pack. The startline was the between the Bramble mark and about 0.6 NM towards the RYS. Funny enough, the first mark was a fetch to a mark near Lepe spit, en then we had to cross the Solent. The tide was very stong, pushing us to the west.

At this first mark we were in the middle of the pack. In the next two upwind and downwind legs we managed to fight our way back to the front of the pack. There had some really nice mark roundings and some excellent kite drops.

Yesterday I nominated myself as ‘Dick du Jour’, for asking the foredeck to take down the kite on the site where the pole was still up. That would have meant that by pulling they had to break the pole in order to get the kite in. Today nothing like this happened, all the drops, up to the last second were perfect.

Our main mistake during this race across the Solent was that we overstood (in other words: sailed a greater distance than really was necessary) the windward mark two times.

For the third day in a row we rounded the racing mark ‘Sevenstar Yacht Transport’, or as Cowes radio calls it ‘Sevenseas Yacht Transport’. We really wonder how much money the CEO, CFO, COO, CIO and Board of Directors have paid to have so much exposure. It could also be that they will be charged for each boat rounding the mark, a bit like the Google adds, may be.

Anyhow, we continued and the crossing of the solent was followed by two long reaches towards the bramble bank. In 21 kts of wind with a tight reach is was exciting sailing. Exciting for us, but even more exciting for the J-boats who were really flying. Unfortunately some of them took off and crossed us.

Just before the final leg to the finish we sailed with kite no 2 on a close reach. We were 20 degrees low of the mark. When we finally decided to change head sails and head up for the South Bramble buoy, we must actually have lost some ground on the others.

In the end we came 6th on corrected time which means we are now 3rd in our class. We felt we deserved more then a 6th on corrected time, but I’m afraid it means we will just have to work harder and sail faster…

Boj Mirck