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RPYC Wednesday Racing - Great Winds, Excellent Sailing

The race this week was excellent, splattered with excitement, humour, risk and violence (the gybes that is, nobody got beat up!), but no blood. Out of a fleet of 18 yachts we finished 10th OTL and 4th OHC - 12 seconds from a 3rd place (Reflections) and 54 seconds from 1st (Frenzy). The handicap result not unreasonable given we had a 1st place a couple of weeks ago. But the OTL results were excellent beating three Farr’s, two S80’s and Ragnar and Beluga, not to mention Reflections who brought up the rear 7m 35s behind us. We had a good start, a little behind the gun but we crossed the line with momentum and quickly took up position behind Aida. Aida rounded Foam first and we were close behind. As soon as we were clear of the mark we tacked away to keep clear air for the beat up to Sanders. I’ll not go through every twist and turn but we held up well to Sanders approaching the mark on starboard which made for a good rounding mid fleet. Alex set the pole for the downwind run to Dolphin East and we lost no time on this run rounding the mark well for the beat back to Sanders. On the second rounding of Sanders we lost a couple of positions but still held up to the front of the fleet. Rounding Dolphin West was straightforward and allowed a fast reach to the Day Buoy. And then it gets interesting... Powering towards the Day Buoy at 7 knots (+-) was great fun but as we closed we were also converging with the Divi ‘A’ fleet. Heaven Can Wait (HCW) would reach the mark first, fine, but we were arriving at speed right on her tail and alongside True South. True South appeared to want to push up close to the mark and then get above HCW, but we were in the way, something which Barry (skipper True South) did not appear to appreciate - signified with a bit of yelling and waiving. In the 12 seconds leading up to the mark I felt we had sufficient overlap to round the mark whilst True South and another Divi A yacht kept clear, not that I had any choice. We were barrelling down to the mark and had no way to get behind True South without interfering with other boats descending on the mark. I could have tried to cut under the mark and done a 360 to round it but that would have created chaos with the boats behind me and may have run the risk of ’T’ boning HCW who were coming up from the mark. These are all split second decisions and in the end we held to the mark, rounding it with millimetres to spare and not making contact with any body else.. Looking at the video, my, at the time, view, that we had rounding rights over True South is debatable. A case can be made that we were short of an overlap when True South reached the zone (30 metres from the mark). At the speed we reached the zone when 8.3 seconds from the mark, we are careering along at 7 knots! The overlap needed to be established by 16:10:57. It was definitely established at 16:10:59 but the transom line from True South is unclear (on the video) before that. Looking at the video we may well have lost a protest. But we missed everything and I suspect that Barry (True South) understood our limited alternatives. Rounding the Day Buoy we did a simultaneous gybe with True South and then got onto line behind HCW for the reach to Knot Spit. The rest of the race was also exciting, albeit with a little less stress. We positioned well through the rounding of Poplar and Crawley marks. We just got to Crawley in time to round it ahead of Rum Runner (who had overtaken us at Poplar), they finished 17 seconds behind us. We maintained an average speed of 5.5 knots in windy conditions, wind speed averaged 17 knots - SSW, with gusts up to 23 knots. Itinerant was first over the line with a speed of 5.69 knots. HCW averaged 5.92 knots around the Division A course. Lady Liza was well managed over the course by Alex, Mike, Heather, Derek and Frank. With six up that’s just the right number of crew for these conditions.