30th November

Dry cold and light wind greeted our skippers in HYC on this Sunday morning. We laid our normal windward-leeward course with a start-finish in the middle with our usual 2 laps. The northwesterly wind allowed us to have a big enough course making for great racing and good tactics. Like any race the start was important and our line was pretty neutral resulting in skippers starting at various location on the line, but pick the wrong side and you can see your fellow skippers sailing past you to the mark. But with such a long course you still had a chance to catch up and capitalise on others errors. Everyone won races but it was Gilbert Louis with his old reliable TS2 who took the lead. Fergal who suffered from an unknown problem for the first 4 races struggled but once we found out it was his jib boom sheet attachment point that was moving and continuously changing the sheeting angle, his TS2 was a different boat and became a lot more competitive and started winning races. Des’s Disco was difficult to sail on that day but despite his tuning issue (which we have learned since have been fixed) he sailed competitively.

 

14th December

Even dryer, even colder and a lot chillier this Sunday in HYC then on Day 1 of the series. The same skippers were out and Jeff came despite back pain and though he didn’t sail, he helped Des tune his Disco resulting in Des taking line honours from race 1 and winning 5 out of the 8 races. Gilbert had one of his worst day and whilst his TS2 was as quick as the others the cold must have impaired his vision as he touched marks a number of times. With the 3 boats so evenly matched each mistake cost dearly, making it next to impossible to make up the lost ground. Further to day 1 of the series and the tuning done on Fergal’s TS2 he was also quick off the start finishing with 7 second places and winning the last race of the day.

 

15th February

Well we did make the right decision to postpone last week racing due to the snow. Today was a fantastic day with 12-14 knots of wind. Perfect for me to try out my V6, Fergal’s new Disco and Des’s new keel. Yes you have it a lot of new stuff to try. Jeff also came to give us a hand in the running of the racing. We managed to complete 11 races in top rig conditions.  After a few tweaks to balance the boat I managed to get it going quite well and won 9 out of the 11 races to take the lead of the series again and build a healthy lead. Des and Fergal remain close and whilst Des had more experience with his Disco, Fergal was learning helming and tuning his new boat but also got very friendly with our weather mark which was a costly mistake as he conceded places to both Des and myself. Nonetheless both Gilbert and Fergal have had a taste of their new boat and will get bet as time goes... Really promising.

 

29th March

17 to 23 knots of wind gave us the opportunity to try out the B rig for Gilbert, Fergal and Des. And after a few tweaking we were on our way for 11 races. With the S to SW wind direction it was limiting our race area for a proper course so we decided to have a running start to a mooring buoy and 2 laps of windward-leeward course type. We enjoyed great sailing in these wind conditions and it even lifted some “waves” for our boats forcing us to adjust our tuning for the water condition. It was close racing but Gilbert and his V6 had an edge winning 10 of the 11 races. This enabled Gilbert to extend his lead but second place is still to be decided between Fergal and Des.