SYC Summer Series 2008, Race 3 Sunday 22 June
Pulling the curtains back lets warm sunshine flood in, however the whistling around the eaves confirms that a solid south easterly had arrived as forecast. There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of activity down at the marina and eventually just Serefe, Highland Daughter, Chiron, Mean Feeling and Barda make it to the lock. Rob is away recovering from a night in London so Barda is a bit light today with Jason, Nigel, Pete, Daff and myself on the steering stick.

The breeze certainly seems to be building and nobody complains at the order to don life jackets. With a single reef in the main and no headsail we head outside the harbour and immediately realise that we need two reefs...which is a problem as the 2nd pennant has come out and we head back into shelter to sort this out. With so much wind about we have the #4 jib on deck which has never been out of it’s bag before. Assuming it would use the forward tracks that’s where we run the sheets, however with 5 minutes to go we hoist and realise that it has to run on the main tracks. By the time we’re tacked around and fixed this we cross the line very late, chasing both Chiron and Highland Daughter (it appears that Serefe and Mean Feeling had decided to go home before the start). So it’s a three boat race.

Neil and Anne-Marie Prescott are on the beach and have set us a challenging race for the conditions, though when the course sheet is taped to the bulkhead I do a double take as there’s a weird last leg indicated...more of that later. A few minutes into the race and Paul sailing Chiron decides that the conditions are not quite what he had in mind for a pleasant Sunday sail and gracefully retires - (thanks for starting Paul so we had a race).

So now there are just two boats left bashing our way west towards mark number 2, popularly known as Beechams. Highland Daughter may have waterline length on Barda but with her roller furling she can’t point. Barda however with the main reefed down and the tiny jib is making solid progress, keeping 5-6 knots even though the waves are hurling us around. I fall off the side deck with the tiller after one ‘big’ landing, taking the tiller with me and we end up with a very messy crash tack that leaves Jason up to his waist in water and everybody laughing, though I do wonder if this is the best treatment around for the trapped nerve in my shoulder.

After the beat from hell we clip around number 2 and hurtle off downhill to number 1. Highland Daughter give us time, so all we need to do for maximum points is stay in front and not do anything silly, which apparently includes calling for the bullet proof 1.5oz kite. Mutiny indeed, but we are holding a steady 9 knots and surfing up to 14.5 knots. Jason suggests that the reason we still don’t have any wind instruments on the boat has nothing to do with budgets but down to me wanting to keep them in the dark as to just how windy it is. I later learn from Highland Daughter that it never fell much below 30 knots and peaked at 36 knots (Force 8).

At this point the DSC alarms goes off and we listen to a Mayday from a sailboat very near by that is having problems in the conditions with an 8 month pregnant lady aboard and a skipper with broken ribs. Shoreham Life Boat launches and is quickly on scene with the SAR chopper. There’s not much we can do to help other than keep off the radio so we press on as they are safely recovered to Shoreham Harbour (click here for the full story >>).

Passing number 1 we carry on to the east keeping the wind on our quarter - a round up with the following sea is a real threat in a light boat like the Beneteau First Class 10 and even Highland Daughter get caught out as they unroll that big headsail. We gybe towards the shore and Highland Daughter get past us, but with a lot of upwind work to follow we are not that worried. In fact we round number 5 around 75 meters behind Highland Daughter and immediately start to climb, out-pointing HD by around 10 degrees.

Everybody aboard Barda is in the groove by now and despite the conditions we are pulling off some great tacks with Nigel working the main through the puffs to keep us on our feet and powered up. Daff is leaping around the boat, never missing a step to keep the runners in order and Pete is a power house trimmer getting the jib home. Jason, with little to do up the pointy end apart from getting very wet indeed is doing the tactics, which seems to focus on making sure the spinnaker stays down below in its bag.

We get round mark 1 a very long way in front of HD and following the sketch of the course on our bulkhead set sail for the west mark and the finish line... which is still worrying me. It’s worrying Nigel as well who did the sketch, and he suddenly realises that the written notes include leaving mark 6 to port before the line! A glance back at Highland Daughter confirms we are heading for the wrong place and we bear away to sail deep, which actually doesn’t hurt us much as we are now surfing and hurtling inshore with 14 knots making a regular appearance on the log.

Picking out mark 6 from the waves takes a while but we are soon on it and hardening up for what really is our last leg. We tack off the angry looking lee shore before tacking back to wards the west, making the finish line in one tack to take line honours and claim HD’s scalp. It may have ended up as a 2 boat race, but the points still count and we had a great sail. The new lewmar vang blocks have however burst under the load and one of the checkstay wires has started to unravel, but other than Pete’s bruised knee and my shoulder locking up a few hours later, we came away from a punishing race with only minor damage - well done Barda.

SYC Summer Series 2008, Race 2 , Sunday 8 June
Sunday 8th of June brings the second race in the Sussex Yacht Club Summer Series for 2008 and Barda is keen to make the most of the forecast light airs and sunshine. However before we go anywhere we needed to sort out the bottom that has been untouched since the start of the season – Southwick canal is as uninviting as ever, but the scrub was well overdue and we leave the mooring with a hull and foils clean and slippery.

Today is also Jason’s birthday so myself, Nigel, Pete, Rob and Daff wish him the best and he tells us the best present he could have is a victory today… crew confidence is rather high then! However just as we enter the lock the engine coughs and dies… Chiron kindly help us in, whilst I dive down below to find the fuel is off and the Yanmar needs bleeding. This is weird, as I could have sworn I turned the fuel on after putting another 10 litres of diesel in the tank before casting off. Only after I’ve got the engine running again do I find that Nigel, who had started her up, had become a bit befuddled and turned the fuel off again – I must label the cock with an on and off plate.

Hoisting the main is becoming a real pain as the new mains’ bolt-rope is proving a nightmare to keep in the track. Despite elongating the entry slot and moving the pre-feeder to various positions, it is taking us anywhere between 5 and 10 minutes of fiddling to get the main up. This needs to be fixed so will be calling Quantum for some guidance.

Once outside the harbour we shoot the breeze a few times and it is clear that the earlier offshore breeze has been reversed by a freshening sea-breeze that is gently creeping round from SE to SW. On the beach the RO gives us a non-standard course, which with an Easterly start and the moving breeze suggests we need to get the code zero out for the start.

Crossing the line with reasonable pace we pop the zero, drop the #1 and concentrate on boat speed – there is an individual recall but not for us. Most of the fleet are to leeward towards the beach, but the Laser SB3 Bathstore and J105 BoJangles are to windward flying asymmetrics, with BJ eventually rolling over us and we drop off the pace in their bad air, reaching mark 6 in fourth place behind Ella who has come up from leward.

Up the beat, recognising that we are in a wind bend we tack off to port to sail the ‘knock’ early and before the Port tack turns into the wrong way as the wind bend progresses. Back on starboard we watch through the beat as our heading progresses from 145 degrees magnetic up to an occasional lift of 165 degrees. Making the most of our overlapping #1 we are consistently out-pointing both BoJangles and Bathstore (who we later learnt had a damaged gooseneck). Despite having a fishing boat moored right on the layline, we tack onto port for mark 4 and round it in first place, hoisting the code zero again for the reaching leg down to mark 1.

Despite our code zero, Derek and Martin gradually sail BoJangles through beneath us, powered by her huge asymmetric, not to mention Sam and Barnie doing some grand prix hiking on BJ’s rail (see photo above). BJ gets to mark 1 just in front of us and Jason on Barda’s foredeck choreographs us through a textbook spinnaker peel to our biggest running kite. BoJangles is sailing the angles down to the west using their asymmetric, whilst we choose to make the most of our symmetric spinnaker, running close to dead down wind in a breeze that is definitely starting to go light.

BJ gybes out to the west and we start converging, with BJ getting the inside berth at the east mark where they drop their asymmetric and go for the line under headsail alone. Barda takes a gamble and we simply harden up onto the breeze, reaching our big kite. BJ realise they have made a slow option and re-hoist their kite and we drag race for the line. Try as we might that dammed asymmetric is just too much for us and BJ beat us over the line by a measly 5 seconds, however on handicap we have spanked them (as you can see from the photo, Rob is not happy about BoJangles getting over the line before Barda).

Looking back at the fleet our biggest threat is still from Bathstore who we have to beat by around a minute and half in every hour – this is going to be close. With the small lock still out of action and a commercial vessel getting preferential treatment to us (grrhh) it takes nearly 2 hours before we get back on our mooring and up to the SYC bar for the results. Bathstore have beaten us into 2nd place by one measly second on corrected time!

Next time out we just have to beat Bathstore, though bearing in mind that the course ended up suiting the asymmetric boats almost all the way round, we’re really chuffed with our second 2nd in the series.

(I'll post a link to the SYC results page once they are published).

SYC Summer Series 2008, Race 1 , Sunday 1 June
With all the kerfuffle sorting out the Royal Escape Race, until Karen reminded me on Saturday morning, I'd completely forgotten about the start of the 2008 Summer Series, so with a last minute scratch crew of myself, Jason, Rob and of course Nigel, I was thankful that light airs were forecast.

As we squeezed the Sussex fleet and a few fishing boats into the 0800 lock I questioned the wisdom of those last few pints at the previous nights Royal Escape Dinner, but a fine mug of tea got us in the swing, which was more than could be said for Dave Ramus our OOD, who was welcomed onto the beach wiping sleep from his eyes to receive a relieved cheer from the fleet. If I was feeling rough, then Dave was ten times worse, so hats off to him for managing to get out of bed at all.

Dave set us a standard course of 6.8 miles to suit the light airs, with NE puffs to around 5 knots and lulls of a lot less for the start. Off the line the SB3 Bathstore, helmed by Robin Stevenson, made the most of their asymmetric and took off like a scalded cat leaving the rest of us wallowing (see the picture above as Bathstore gets clean away, and something horrible below from Barda).

In retrospect we should have tried the code zero, but in the end made the most of our #1 and arrived at mark 6 behind both Serefe and Moonlight Saunter. We elected to gybe hoist at the mark and sailed fairly deep to sit on the layline out to mark 1, tracking east to fight the strong westerly tide. Moonlight got herself east whilst Serefe dropped down to the west and Bathstore romped off consolidating her lead.

David took Moonlight around 1 rather wide which let us through and we chased after Serefe who was footing low for power in the dying breeze. A pair of trawlers looked like they were going to give us problems but fortuitously they hove to to pull their nets, letting us climb up on every lift and get away from Serefe. By the time we reached 6 the breeze had dropped right off and we struggled to tack and clear the mark against the tide, eventually getting past for a gybe set again with only a couple of feet to spare.

Thinking that the wind was down to the west, we tried coaxing as much as we could out of the light kite with a fairly hot angle, but eventually we came to a virtual stop as the wind died. Looking around, Moonlight Saunter was out to the east and seemed to still have a little wind (see picture above), as did Serefe, so cursing our lot we bobbed for a while staring with the binoculars for any hints as to where the next zephyr would arrive. It became apparent that a sea breeze was cooking, so with an eye on a distant wind-line out to sea we dropped our limp kite and pointed Barda’s genoa to the south as the tell tails started to pick up. Minutes later we are fairly clipping along, riding a superb lift that brought us right up to number 1 for a starboard rounding.

As the shift continued we gybed round and set off for the east mark, watching in some amusement as Bathstore, picking her way through a mixed fleet of dinghies racing from SMYC, sailed into a very deep hole. Barda, sniffing her chance, slalomed her way through the gaps in the still uncertain breeze and we closed on Bathstore, clawing her way up-tide to try and clear the east mark. Soon Barda and Bathstore were almost parked together by the east mark a couple of boat lengths from each other. Bathsore peeled off for her gybe first and we followed in short order, but with such a short leg we just couldn’t catch them and Bathstore took the gun. Moonlight crossed in third, followed by Serefe and once the sums had been done by Dave it looked as if we’d got a 2nd under IRC, which isn’t a bad start to our summer campaign.

Back on the mooring I hung over the side to see if Barda needed a scrub, to be horrified by a 6 inch green beard. So if I’d dived on the boat on Saturday rather than doing those chores at home, would we have beaten Bathstore? We shall never know, but I will definitely be doing the scuba thing before the next race.

(I'll post a link to the SYC results page once they are published).

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