Race Report - 12-13 July

While the high pressure was definitely upon us for the weekend and the wind was far from decisive, three blue-sky races were successfully completed by the RORC race team in South-Easterly breezes. We saw an excellent turnout for a shoreline weekend, with eleven boats racing.

Saturday 12 July

In the first race, we started to the East, aiming for West Ryde Middle. The wind off Cowes, as it often is in a SE, was definitely more Easterly. The tide was on the turn from flood to ebb.

While the fleet generally agreed that the best option was to start at the pin, a significant difference of opinion then emerged on the best route to the weather mark. Should boats go offshore, and risk the foul tide filling in? Or should they go inshore, inside the wind bend, and accept the lighter winds? The former group was led by Dancer, Defender and Dynamite. The latter group was led by Doublet, Destroyer and Dauntless.

The boats inshore found soft winds, sloppy water bouncing off the Norris sea wall, and enviously watched the offshore boats sail unimpeded to the mark. Dancer led to the first mark by some margin, followed by Defender, before the lead inshore boat arrived in the shape of Doublet who had cut her losses slightly earlier.

A very beamy reach, verging on fine, followed going North to the southern edge of the Brambles. The lead couple of boats were seen to hoist, and later boats did not; nonetheless, no positional changes were really observed after the first mark, with white-sail reaches and a short run being the order of the day. The podium finished in the order printed above. Congratulations to Dancer!

After a wind-incurred pause in the action, with boats drifting agonisingly close to the ice cream kiosk on the green and needing to be towed back to Cowes, the wind filled back in and the Race Committee decided on a different plan of action to avoid the Cowes wind hole. The first mark was set as downwind, "Island Sailing Club" off the green.

Dauntless, prioritising inshore line bias, got the best of the start and broke the inside overlap to lead by a length or two at the first mark. However, with their 2024 charts they were perturbed not to see "Donna" printed on the mark when rounding and made a snap decision to turn around and point at the next downwind, downtide mark! It wasn't the only error; Defender, self-confessing later to not having been sure of the course, nearly carried on straight past it offshore and had to turn around, adding to the chaos!

By the time the confusion had cleared, Doublet had positioned themselves nicely to weather on what could have been a fetch or could have been a beat to "Royal Thames", near the Brambles post.

Dauntless though found excellent upwind gearing and came back up underneath Doublet, regaining all the lost height. The fleet were pulling themselves all high, nobody wanting to be the first to crack off to the mark in foul tide, and by the time that the fetch was acknowledged and sheets were eased Dauntless had positioned herself between Doublet and the mark. Destroyer was not far behind.

The later legs were a beat up the bank, a fine reach over to CCYC off the Shrape, and a run to home. However, at our end of the fleet they were largely processional and podium finished Dauntless, Doublet and Destroyer, although only by two seconds between second and third.

Sunday 13 July

With slightly more consistent breeze and starting in the vestiges of the flood tide, the fleet were sent to weather as far as Colette. The right tactics were definitely to find the biased pin end and go offshore; but who would come out on top?

Judging the start was challenging, as while boats could just about cross the pin on starboard, any attempt to kill speed and time invariably resulted in being pushed closer to the mark than was comfortable.

The result was a large number of boats all very close at the pin end. One boat, who had assumed that they might have a clear start on Port, sadly misjudged the whole affair and noisily fell foul of Rule 10 and probably more. Destroyer, who might have been lining up for a decent start on starboard, was forced to tack at this point and spent time going in the wrong direction.

Dauntless, who moments earlier had been OCS, managed to get the best start but still needed to squeeze hard to get past the pin. Decoy and Dynamite were called OCS; Dynamite went back to restart but Decoy, after some time off the water, clearly just wanted to get in the mix so carried on.

After boats had cleared wind and gotten going, Decoy (albeit likely OCS), Doublet and Destroyer were looking good. A couple of boats had opted to go inshore; I couldn't tell who or why. Now the challenge was to pick the time to tack across the channel to Osborne Bay as a container ship was coming through the race. All boats opted to go behind, with Destroyer tacking first but it didn't seem to do her favours. At the front of the fleet, Dauntless tacked in a position which would turn out to be barely 50 yards short of the layline and extended from there.

Over the next few legs back and forth between the bank and Osborne Bay, Dauntless wasn't challenged, and Destroyer kept her second. However, Darling and Doublet had a good battle for third with Mike Greville pipping Josh Voller by a second, carrying kites across the finish line.