Another excellent weekend racing (Solent/South Coast)

[Channel Sailor]

A good news and good experiences post. There must have been a fair few yacht and dinghy fleets out this weekend and I would guess those on the central south coast must have had excellent sailing. For myself and my crew we had a really good time. It is days like that that make it all worth while. For one race our club joined up with a couple of other clubs for an interclub race and ended up with nearly 30 yachts on the start line in Hayling Bay. In the fleet were an extremely varied mix of mainly cruisers or cruiser/racers of all ages and types. The oldest yacht I think was 1910, the smallest probably a Folkboat or Sonata, the largest probably a 38ft CC cruiser, mixed in with a J80 and a few 80s/90s vintage cruiser races. I vaguely recall there was a Foxhound 24 in there is well. We were also graced with a Swan and a Sunfast 32. The two downwind legs saw a right old mix of Symmetric, Asymmetric and white sails. The wind suited the smaller/lighter yachts but at least this meant that a lot more yachts joined in and smaller boats had their day. The bigger boats can excel on another windier day. OK so the handicap system probably could have been the subject of hours of post race dinner debate, but it wasn't because it seems like everybody accepts it limitations and has their own race with the yachts around them on the water that have similar abilities in the conditions. Afterwards there was eighty in number crew and owners/skippers afterwards for a lively post race dinner. I reckon it could not get any better for weekend local club Cruiser/Racer club racing as a sport. Sunday's racing was just as good except a smaller fleet. My message to anyone only lurking in this racing forum is get out there and join in.

My thanks to the forum for the tips on the upwind spinnaker douse, the Stretch and Blow method. It worked a treat.

 

[j80]

Also enjoyed that weekend's racing - Saturday was great with lots of boats - made it a lot more fun. Diversity of boats and ratings provided plenty of banter material as always after the race - or let's face it - any handicap race! 3 up made us busy with kite and a bit overpowered on the final beat - but it was still massively easier than just sailing double-handed - great weekend's sailing

Edit to add - was so much more fun & social sailing with more boats - great if more boats sailed with other clubs and just joined in - like most in the racing at weekend - could not care less about about results handicaps etc - i totally agree that anyone who wants to try out racing there - just join in - v.informal and if you don't want to use your own boat to start - we are always looking for more victims - i mean crew if they want to try out friendly racing from chichester harbour area. we'll be doing a passage race to lymington and back this weekend - staying on the boat showing that a j/80 is a real cruising boat - hope the bar is good in lymington - sleeping on the J is like camping without a tent!

 

[Judders]

Bit further west, there wasn't enough wind to get a race in in Poole Bay so the JOG Poole-Cowes race was canned. We'd all had a cracking race there on the Saturday though.