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Sunday 13th January saw the first sail of the Frostbite series on Censored – and it was windy….
We thought that a sail to blow away the cobwebs and keep the momentum
going that we had built up in the spring, Cowes week and winter series
last year was a good idea. Yet again, looking at the
forecasts and it did not seem that the weather was going to be in our
favour. At 0830 Sunday morning, standing on the hard at Warsash
Marina, we were the only lunatics about, and stood silently munching on
our bacon rolls, looking out to where we were going to be
heading. It was windy alright, but the water was at least
fairly flat – in the Hamble.
Normally, we race a single class race – i.e. all of the boats
that we race against are 707's. This handicap racing in the
707 is new to us – there are only 2 other boats of our class
registered – Darkness and Lutine Belle.
The five of us set about getting the boat ready and set off. It
really is somewhat unfair that we had to motor all the way out past the
bank to come all the way back up Southampton water. However, with
a SSW wind, we were soon up by the Committee boat, which was flying the
Yankee flag (strange that!). We quickly realised that we
needed to put a reef in – only to find that there was a problem
with the reefing line – so in true Censored style, we improvised,
and managed to mouse one of the mooring lines through, successfully
reefing before the 1000 start for the multi-hulls. We were
the third start (class 2) and chose the pin end of the line – the
tide was still running in (quite quickly) and we managed to get away
perfectly.
The conditions were a little tough and we had 10 other competitors to
beat in our class. At the start we were leading Erik the Red (a
Mustang 30) and Electra (a First 31.7) but it was very close –
the winds were gusting and calling them for Dave (our helmsman for the
day) was imperative to stop the boat from stalling. There
was probably a constant 25 knots with gusts up to 35 knots. The other
tricky thing for us to handle was the navigation. Our courses are
normally windward leeward courses, but this race was about finding the
marks and heading the correct direction. I had been elected
to be navigator for the day, and having sailed this stretch of the
water a few years before I at least had an idea of where the marks were
as well as being ably assisted by my laminated chart!
The first mark rounding went well and we headed back over to Hovercraft
3, which could have been a Spinnaker run but we opted not to.
Back then to Bird Pile, then Hovercraft 4, Admiralty South, Hovercraft
4, Outer Distance Mark, Deans Lake, Netley then a repeat of the course
– the Committee keep racing until the 2 hour time limit, which in
all fairness is about right!!!
We managed to get the Spinnaker up twice – the first was a bit of
a shock – almost no sooner was it up than it had to come back
down again – we were flying!!! The second was when we
rounded Bird Pile for the second set of mark roundings and then headed
up towards Hovercraft 3. As the spinnaker popped up we all headed
towards the back of the boat, I called a gust of wind and it really was
a gust. We seriously took off this time, and the bow of the boat
was out of the water. Great sailing. Unfortunately our
instruments had stopped working (the battery had worked itself loose
with the severe beating that it and we had sustained!) so we don't know
how fast we were travelling but it was very exciting – I think
there were rather a lot of huge, inane grins as we crossed the finish
line!
Only 6 of the 11 starters finished and we finished in second place
behind Erik the Red. It had been a hard race, in terms of
physical agility, strength and concentration – but it wasn't over
yet – we had a 2 hour beat back into Warsash to get home.
It was at this point that I thought about winter sailing on Lutine and
how nice it would be right now to put the kettle on. No
such luck though – there were sandwiches on board, but they could
not be consumed either as 1. we couldn't allow anyone off the
rail and 2. they'd have been very soggy by the time we'd
got them out of the wrappers!
My hands have just about recovered (in time for this Sunday) and the
bruises are beginning to go down! It was cold, wet, windy
and tiring, but fantastic fun.
Liz Lotz
21st January 2008
Censored Crew & LLYC Secretary
As Liz mentions, Lutine Belle is also entered for the Frostbite Series - If you would like to race, please contact Tom Bailey for futher details
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