The weather was glorious, sun every day, never too much wind and although Tuesday was testing, never so little wind that we lost a day’s racing. We could have done better – 17th from 30 in IRC Class 4, but it was a fun week.
Never too much wind, but it did get spicy on the Sunday as the photos below, taken by Beken, show. The wind on the last leg, from Hamstead Ledge back to the finish line at the Royal Yacht Squadron, was generally above 25 knots, frequently 28 knots and touched 30 knots – quite a bit more than the A2 spinnaker is designed for, and enough to break the mast of one of the boats in our class.
The sequence below shows Mostly Harmless:
1. approaching Egypt Point from the west………..
2. close up, with Sophie Singleton doing a great job trimming the kite and Martin Mctigue grinding……..
3. continuing on her way towards the finish…….
4. only then to have to take avoiding action for another boat losing control very thoroughly……..
5. resulting in MH sustaining a tear in the A2 (fortunately only a little one, repaired overnight by One Sails) so Greg Brougham became a human whisker pole as we ran down the Green to finish under white sails
These were not the only photos from Cowes Week: One Sails took a nice picture of the A2 they’d repaired overnight on Sunday ……..
PhotoFrog took a photo in the light race on Tuesday………
And Martin took a number of shots of the crew…….
