Northerlies do not offer much opportunity for beats or deep downwind legs on the Solent, with the result that Mostly Harmless neither hoisted a spinnaker or Code 0 nor tacked other than when rounding a mark in the penultimate race of the JOG season.
After the frustrations of the start in our previous JOG race, Natalie approached the line at Gurnard assertively and was on the line at the gun, to windward and ahead of the rest of the fleet. Trimming for all we were worth, we held off the competition on the reach to Browndown, possibly benefitting as a short-handed crew from any temptation to fly a Code 0.
Pure Attitude, an X37 rating well above Mostly Harmless, and Just So, fully crewed and able to carry not only her Code 0 but also a jib as an inner staysail, had the edge on a reach west with the tide to West Lepe. Heading back to the east to East Knoll buoy we all faced the challenge of a strong ebb. Pure Attitude showed a clean pair of heels by heading well above the rhumb line to get inshore leaving us kicking ourselves for failing to make the same call and get into weaker tide. We came close to hoisting our A5 on a slightly deeper penultimate leg and had it clipped on before the wind piped up to 16 knots and swung a few degrees forward so it remained in the bag.
Arriving at the final mark, North East Ryde Middle, we were still fairly close to Just So and saw Pure Attitude experiencing problems with the furler for either her Code 0 or jib. With Just So still able to carry extra canvas, she opened up her lead to finish four minutes ahead of us on corrected time, while Pure Attitude’s problems resulted in us closing her lead over Mostly Harmless to only 12 seconds, leaving us third in class.
This was also good enough for Mostly Harness to secure 2nd overall among the double handed entries, behind Deb Fish and Rob Craigie in Bellino. Combined with our other results, this meant we were third overall in the 2022 JOG double-handed championship.
The race had finished early enough for us to head back up to London. We were planning to return for Sunday’s race but having had a good day on Saturday and exhausted by our efforts opted for a quiet day reading the papers and getting on with domestic chores.