Who was out this weekend?.....

Morning on the Medway was light and the tide strong so we gave up and my crew went home.  No boat made it to the first mark in the time limit so the race was void.

After lunch not light at all - full wiring up-wind and sitting on the side down-wind and beautifully sunny and steady.  I had a scratch crew so no input from my crew and so started poorly but pulled our way up to 4th with the beat down river.  Thrashed the Osprey up-wind and got nicely ahead of the 59er.  Overstood the next mark and let the 59er through, then sailed the wrong course and had to double back to make a correction and then capsised on a gybe, so we didn't get a good result but we still beat most of the boats back to the line - just not by enough.  Nice to get back well before the Osprey though, even with all our troubles.  It used to be that the Osprey was better than us upwind - not anymore.

You cant really do this on the Blaze due to the way the strenghtening has been done under the foredeck. The one that has been done already (by a guy called Pete Barlow if memory serves) was done (almost) professionally and involved a lot of work being done to ensure it did not rip apart when it was used. It certainly was no home build!

Oh and I found the fastest point of sail when I had a Blaze was actually a tight reach because you can keep the power on when all around are having to dump like mad.....

Medway - it was sparkling sailing in a force 3 - 4 SW this Sunday.  Windward starts to a bouy upstream, and then off down the river much of which could be done by kite - but no all - due the sinuous nature of the river.  In both races the 800s were gone and enough wind for us to leave the 400s and similar behind.  You might think this would be processional but it certainly wasn't. 

The 2 4000s (us and our rivals) battled it out all the way down river and there was the 59er (and a 5000 having a nightmare) in contention along with the odd 3000, 29er and a 600.

In the first race we got away nicely and left our 4000 and 59er rivals behind but the rival 4000 is good downwind and if its deep then the 59er comes into its own and so we were all close together at the most leeward end.  However we have the best windward performance and so we gound the 59er down and got right on the tail of the 4000 when they dropped the tiller during a tack and we were through.  Only a mile or so of the race left and the wind was freeing so we thought this would be processional - with us in the lead.  We rounded the corner and could see the club in the distance but it would be a bit tight to carry the kite and our rivals were now well behind - time to be conservative.

Horror struck when I next looked over my shoulder, our rivals were in a freeing gust and were really blasting and working their way up to windward and then they popped their kite.  There was a damn 29er with them too.  Soon they were over us and and dropping the kite in front as they rounded the mark for the short final beat.  We couldn't catch them.  The only consolation was that the 59er was out of sight.

Race 2. The rival 4000 got a cracking start and took a nice gust downwind to the corner of the river.  We did well, keeping the 800s and the 5000 behind us on the tight spinnaker reach but we were all hit by a massive header sending many swimming.  I managed to get my crew back on board from her swim on the end of the wire by diving across the boat but we had to drop the kite to negotiate the corner.  The rival 4000 had non of that and was gone - he must have been feeling good because he'd done a mile or so and no 800 had passed him yet.

We took back some distance and so did the 59er on the subsequent downwind legs, and by dint of good judgement on the shifts we were back on there tails by the most leeward part of the course (or was it just luck)? 

Our now infamouse upwind speed now came into play.  They covered as best they could but after a mile we were through, after another mile they were a 100m behind and and so it went on until they were almost out of sight when we finished.  I had shared a little secret with the 59er at lunch and they too had better upwind speed and challenged the other 4000.  We meanwhile were washing down the boat - oh joy.