Month: September 2020

If things go wrong when racing double handed, it’s pretty hard to recover.  This was the story of the IRC Double Handed Championship for Mostly Harmless, despite all the omens for us being pretty good.

We made the starting area on the Saturday in unusually good time and well prepared, but still managed to be late at the line and at the wrong end, got most of the shifts up the beat wrong and were unable to recover offwind.  Race two, in a bit more breeze, was going ok and we then made great progress (keeping higher than our immediate competitors) on a marginal spinnaker reach, only to mess the drop sufficiently thoroughly (in common with a number of others around us) to call it a day and head home.

Notwithstanding the feeling that we might have been jinxed by our preparations and being in good time on Saturday, we were in  unusually good time and well prepared again on Sunday.  But Natalie made a great start this time, on the  line at the favoured end.  Our strategy for the beat was slightly compromised by higher rating boats being reluctant to tack on a shift, but it was sufficiently sound to put us ahead of the other similarly rated boats in the fleet at the first mark.  Then Tom discovered on the spinnaker hoist that he had rigged the sheet wrongly and, despite recovering several places on the second upwind leg and subsequent run (even though a coaster got in our way) to improve on our result in race 1, we decided to give race 4 a miss and return to HYS for a bit of bimbling in the autumn sunshine.

Perhaps we might have received more attention from photographer Paul Wyeth if we had looked a bit more competitive.  He took some great photos of other boats, but the only appearance of Mostly Harmless in the gallery was a glimpse of a big white and red kite in a very crowded finish on Sunday morning.

Another long coastal race with JOG, this time heading out to the east from the start line at Gurnard to the Owers mark off Selsey Bill before returning to the Solent, a round trip of 48 miles.

With a westerly, it would be a downwind benefit for J105s on the outbound leg, with the prospect of an upwind slog on the return with a struggle to sail to our handicap.  Mostly Harmless led the race to the Owers mark, arriving with a lead of 4 or 5 minutes over the fully crewed J109  Just So.  With the breeze at 16 knots, a gust caught the spinnaker during the drop and it went in the water, allowing several boats to catch up and round ahead while we were trawling.  But despite sailing double handed against crews of five in our closest rivals on the beat back to Gurnard, we managed the windshifts well and overhauled all but Just So (which was 15 minutes ahead by the finish) to finish second on the water and on handicap.

The soaking wet spinnaker removed any choice about joining Sunday’s Royal Southampton YC’s doubled handed race out to the the West Princessa mark to the south east of the Isle of Wight as it needed to flying to get it dry!  The conditions at 10 o’clock were not promising: all the forecasts suggested a very light breeze.  And so it turned out. So we hoisted the spinnaker to dry it out and, with virtually no wind, decided to retire  rather than face a few hours drifting until the wind filled in.  This turned to be a good decision: all but two of the fleet eventually retired too.

 

JOG normally runs a couple of races over a weekend at this time of year, the first outbound to Poole on the Saturday and the second back to Cowes on the Sunday.  With Covid-19 restrictions in mind, JOG organised a race to Poole and back over the Saturday of the bank holiday weekend, followed by a race within the Solent on the Sunday.

It was breezy and cold when we left the Hamble, with a 20 knot northerly blowing as a consequence of a low sitting over the north sea.  With gusts of 25 knots we elected to put in a reef, although the wind was forecast to moderate a bit later in the morning.  Racing double handed against a fleet that was mostly fully crewed (or close to fully crewed, after allowing for Covid-19 restrictions), we took the start cautiously but were soon reeling the rest of Class 2, including another J105,  Jacana, racing with a crew of 5.  We lost Jacana while shaking out the reef and were never able to recover the ground, despite leaving the rest of Class 2 behind on a quick white sail reach to East Hook buoy off  Sandbanks.

Some of the fleet hoisted spinnakers for a short leg from East Hook to the Ancient Wreck Buoy close to the end of the channel into Poole Harbour.  We were double handed and the leg was very short so we elected not to risk it, so full marks to crew of Mzungo, a Sunfast 3200 sailing double handed for hoisting theirs.  The decision was probably critical since, although we held second place on the water behind Jacana all the way back to the finish at Cowes, our lead over Mzungo was never enough to make up for the handicap penalty carried by a J105 compared to a Sunfast 3200 so we had to settle for third place overall.

Six hours of white sail reaching in Force 5, with the wind shifted backwards and forwards through about 25 degrees and requiring constant trimming of both main and jib was exhausting – with the result that we decided that we didn’t have enough energy for Sunday’s race and our muscles needed a rest!

Rick Tomlinson was out, both acting as safety boat for the JOG fleet and taking photos.  Proofs of Rick’s photos of Mostly Harmless at Hurst above and below.