Races
Cowes Dinard St Malo
The Cowes to Dinard race was our last qualifiers before this year´s highlight the Rolex Fastnet Race. After the wind from everywhere and all chaos Round the Island race we were all hot to make it better this time.
We arrived the day before and enjoyed a nice afternoon sail on the Solent to calibrate our Ockam system. Thommy couldn’t wait to show me how good the new dry food is tasting and indeed, I have to admit that the pasta is better than most of the british cuisine and better than most brands I ever tried. So I was really looking forward to not only the sailing, but also the food part of this race. Jens told me that he bought half a container of the food so there was plenty of the stuff. Yummi. The night before the race we celebrated Thommy´s bday in Kings & Queens with Janet and her girls.
The first warning signal was at 11:50hrs and 195 boats took part in this race. This makes 2000 sailors all keen to be first in France. According to our grib files it will be medium to light and only the way back will be 20knt downwind. It was favoured to start on port side at the Yacht Squadron since we had the current on the nose for the first hour out of the Solent. Tactics was to tack up the Solent on the left side in shallow water then @ slack tack to the middle in deep water to get the 4knt current from behind. It seems that almost everybody was on the left side and a wild tacking orgy started. It was yacht racing at its best with up to 35knts. Right next to us we watched the Rogers 46 “Yeoman XXXII” tacking where tacking was impossible to drill her bowsprit right to the middle of the Swan 56 Noonmark VI who was on a starboard tack. It took the right and fast reflexes from David Aisher to avoid a near collusion probably resulting in an open kitchen on the Swan and in a new Yeoman XXXIII.
Once out of the Solent we could relax from the super tight racing. We tacked south to make with course Guernsey. With still 20-25kn of breeze. Tacking burns a lot of calories and the crew was hungry, but incredible news came out of the inside – we forgot our food…. The only food we had on board for the next 2 days and one night were 5 apples, 4 oranges, some snickers and 2 packages of freeze dry that were accidently still on board!!! But hey, we were only 11 this time. Sjambok on diet.
During the night the wind went down to 0 and the fleet wer drifting into nowhere. We were fighting 4, 5 hours with the DK46 Dark and Steamy, but could control them when the breeze came back and made the finish as second boat in our class 30 minutes before her
We sailed Cowes Dinard St Malo in 21:30:10hrs and finished 11th place corrected overall and 3rd in class for the Seahorse price. We might have made some minor mistakes in the lull which might have put us higher on the ranking ladder. And we also beat the same rated Rogers 46 by some 1,5 hours. We have a good bunch of guy’s on board to sail the Fastnet and we are really looking forward to it.
The way back was champagne sailing with long surfs, brilliant sunshine and cool music. Watch the vids!! Live´s good!
