The last Day skipper course was a Sunday to Friday one and we were fortunate to have 4 students on board who could all handle a yacht fairly well. With mixed weather we sailed in winds between 5 and 28 Kts and did some of our night hours sailing round the South of the Island with tide and Wind at up to 10 Kts Speed over Ground.

The RYA require 100 miles minimum and we did 165 including visiting, Cowes, Haslar, Portsmouth, Southampton and Yarmouth. Excellent company made a for really enjoyable course. All 4 students have indicated they want to sail on WS again and 2 have already booked to do so.

Posted: May 5th, 2009 under Uncategorized.
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As a general rule, on a Yacht off the South Coast, if you can hear the MAYDAY being transmitted then you may be close enough to help.

We had just come through the overfalls off St Albans Head in 20 Kts of SW with the tide when we heard Mayday Polly. We were informally racing against Turning Point a Bavaria 38 which had been berthed alongside us in Yarmouth and were now comfortably a mile a head.

Hearing the MAYDAY I immediately put the crew on close watch with a quarter each and then heard the Coast Guard respond.

The conversation was along these lines.

CG—What is your position?

P-We don’t know

CG-Where have you come from.

P-Poole.

CG—Several questions about speed, course etc with the only useful bit of information elicited that Polly had passed 2 light houses.

P—I can see a yacht.

At this stage Turning Point suggested that the Yacht Polly could see was Wild Spirit and I spoke to the CG reporting the crew had been on close watch but we could not see any vessel other than Turning Point.

CG—Polly do you have any flares on board—Polly found One and fired it then reported it had failed. But for a second or 2 there had been a red light which Rob had seen and was sure about. Based on Rob’s observation I then moved the Cursor of the GPS onto Polly’s position and both us and TP turned around and beat back towards it and the now rather white looking Race.

Polly confirmed she could see both of us heading towards her and we spotted her with Binoculars. Shortly after we had turned and confirmed the flare fix visually the Swanage lifeboat came round the Headland and would clearly arrive before us. I spoke to Portland CG and we were released to continue our passage to Cowes.

Apparently Polly was a 7 metre fishing boat with engine failure, she had been purchased the day before—I make no comment about the wisdom of trying to take such a vessel against tide and wind through a renowned tidal race at Springs.

Posted: May 5th, 2009 under Uncategorized.
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Le Havre Race 

The bank holiday traffic meant that 2 of the crew decided to go direct to Cowes and we would go up the evening before the race on the tide. Unfortunately 2 other crew plus enough provisions to ensure Waitrose makes a profit this year were delayed on the M3 for a couple of hours. This meant that we did not reach Cowes until around 2330 and by the time we had tied up etc the pubs were closing. We did however recover the 2 crew who had been forced to eat a huge Tandoori washed down by copious quantities while they waited.

This was our first Royal Ocean Racing Club race of the Fastnet campaign and we would be content with finishing safely/ acquiring the qualifying miles. Also in the race was Space Race a first 40.7 crewed mainly by former Wild Spirit team members and we were keen to beat them as well.

After a good start we beat down to the needles then turned on to a spinnaker run which was to last most of the way to le Havre. The wind was better than the light ones forecast and we cracked on with the Asymmetric ‘Flying Pig’ at first, changing to the Radial Spinnaker later.

Some confusion arose at the Finish line and we, plus some other yachts, passed the wrong side of the committee boat, fortunately a few minutes later I realised this and we sailed back on whites rounded it and finished correctly but almost half an hour later. Despite this we just beat Phil and his team on Space Race by 6 minutes and came 81^st out of 106.

Our next RORC race is the Eddystone on the Bank holiday weekend.

Posted: May 5th, 2009 under Uncategorized.
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