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RORC Cervantes TrophyCowes – Le Havre
29th April 2006
Mostly Mostly HarmlessHarmless
GBR1381GBR1381RR
Initial planning showed that the original courses in the sailing instructions were either too
long or two short. The shortest had us arriving at around
10.00pm in Le Havre.
So, it was no great surprise that an additional course was proposed to include Ocean
Safety, Nab Tower, EC2 and the finish - a distance of some
140 miles.
Was this a conservative start, Tom? Or was the clock on my PC wrong? Still, it was a good start in clear air and maximum
tide.
I won’t forget the wind shifts on the leg to Bembridge Ledge. We were up, we were down,
we had almost every direction. Now I know what “variable”
means!
The leg out to Ocean Safety was also in flukey winds. But, we eventually spotted a line of wind offshore and went SW to find it. The rest of the leg was good, as was the next in to the
Nab Tower.
One of the advantages of a course like this is that one can see the opposition. We knew we were well up in IRC1 at the
Nab. So, set off to EC2 looking in very good shape…
But, the further we got, the darker it got and the lighter the wind… until our COG became
the same as the tide.
Should we have tacked? Could we? With hindsight, we
should have. There was clearly wind somewhere.
Probably to the West. So, our track might have looked
something like this…
Did I see 12.1kts? And I think the log is under reading! But, it
was a relief to finish at 11.05.26am, according to my
PC.
It was a costly error during the night, although we finished
with some boats who should have been a long way in front.
23rd overall in IRC (out of 45 finishers) and 8th in IRC1 (out of 12) seems a bit unfair. But, we were ahead of some good
boats that had fared worse than us.