CSORC entered the Taittinger Regatta again but this year in our own boat, Jeepster, our J/109.
Taittinger make champagne and they sponsor this weekend regatta, hosted by the Royal Solent Yacht Club in Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight. CSORC has entered it in the past but on a chartered yacht so this year was a first for us and we were very much looking forward to it.
Our weekend racing events tend to follow a regular pattern. We meet at Mercury Yacht Harbour on the Friday where Jeepster is moored and, knowing the weather forecast by then, decide which sails we will need from our stock.
The main sail is our usual, best one, but the jib will be the one best suited to the expected wind speed. We also take a couple of spinnakers, light, medium or heavy depending, again on the expected wind.
We try to leave the mooring around lunch time in order to get some practice at tacking and gybing, and hoisting, gybing and dropping the spinnaker.
There was a slight complication this time though. We had booked Jeepster in at Port Hamble Marina for a lift-out and hull jet wash to clean the underside which hadn’t been done since she arrived at Hamble last October. This would take an hour or so. We departed Mercury in good time, stopped for the hull clean and set off for Yarmouth where we joined the other yachts in a tightly packed marina.
The first race was due to start around 10am on Saturday and we were out, practicing, in good time. The forecast was good to start with 5-15kt but then the threat of force 6 gusts “later”.
The first race went well. The Race Officer sets a course that tests the crews’ performance in all points of wind, so tacking upwind, then running across the wind and finally running down wind, using the spinnaker, which has to be raised, gybed and lowered, all in good time.
We’d forgotten about the threat of the force 6 but it arrived with a bang, see the graph of the wind at the Bramble Bank, about 7 miles to the east. The gust speeds shot up from about 3kt at 13.40 to 20kt around 2pm then higher to 25kt a bit later. Suddenly Jeepster was tricky to handle and meant a reef in the main sail. We sailed on, with a lot of heel and were doing quite well when suddenly, as we rounded the last mark on the course, the pin holding the mainsheet assembly to the traveller pinged out, rolled a bit by the helm’s feet before rolling over the stern!! Suddenly the main sail wasn’t working so it was engine on and a motor back into Yarmouth. So for the second race we scored a DNF (Did Not Finish)!
It seemed as though our weekend racing was finished but we were able to find another shackle and pin from a neighbouring boat in the marina in exchange for a beer for each of their crew at some point in the future.
Sunday morning dawned still very windy with gusts around 27kt so another reef in the main. As we were cruising up and down just behind the start line deciding where about on the line to start we gybed and the mainsail tore, from the no.1 reefing cringle down to the bundle of sail tied down by the sail ties!! Disaster. So definitely an early bath. This time a DNC, Did Not Compete. So we managed just one of the three races!
The wind came up to force 6 on Saturday as forecast and stayed high until we were back at Hamble. Normally such conditions don’t end our racing, we just put a reef in and carry on. But a pin falling out of a shackle and a sail tearing are terminal events.
Anyway the sails are repaired and we are entered in the Poole JOG race 12th/13th September under Skipper Jason Newell. Jeepster is full but we are now planning the Hamble Winter Series which starts at the beginning of October and lasts until the end of November. There will be 2 races on each of the October Sundays and then 1 each on the November Sundays (after the clocks have changed). These races will be in the Central Solent and Southampton Water so quite sheltered water. So meet at Mercury on the Saturdays, choose the sails and practice, with the racing on Sunday. See the website for berth fees.
If any of our readers are interested in racing with us, please email Peter at the Crew Bureau.
