Poole JOG 12/13 September 2026
Breeze, Needles and Fun – Paul Alderton
Jason Newell led a happy crew drawn from MoD NAD-M, HMRC, AWE, DESNZ and DSTL. For many of us it was a first sail on Jeepster, a J/109 or together.
Race Preps – We enjoyed a team building meal on Thu (Gaff Rigger) including Gerry Talbert as guest of honour as an old friend from CSORC entry in the 2020 Caribbean 600.
After a glorious training and familiarisation sail on Friday and visit to Duke of York (Cowes) that evening we were fed and ready for an exciting weekends racing. Our Irish crew member was devastated by the quality of his IoW Guinness, we feigned empathy as dutiful teammates and focused on the excellent Tomahawk steaks.
Saturday ( Race 1) An original plan to set a course to go South of the Isle of Wight was wisely changed by the Race Officer due to strong tides and wind. The downwind start (under full main and A3) off Gurnard to the East through the gate of Snowden and Prince Consort in strong spring tides was hampered for us by a group of swimmers in the starting area. Once safely away we held our own well in the 24 knot winds towards East Bramble (P) and then upwind through Hurst to round North Head (P) putting in the first slab main reef (now 28 knot breeze) for the long challenging beat in lumpy seas SW past the Shingles and Needles to Swanage and Peveril Ledge (S). We were glad to turn downwind again (main with 1st slab and full furler foresail only) for the blast towards Poole and a committee boat finish just East of the entrance. Unfortunately some boats suffered sail damage (the brave or rich crews chose to fly spinnakers) some made navigation mistakes and one J/99 snapped its mast below the spreaders.
We felt we gave a reasonable account of ourselves considering the poor start and breezy conditions to secure 32nd out of 41 finishers.
Lessons- Help the helm more before the start to deal with swimmers, reef earlier (before Hurst), stay North approaching Hurst to avoid slowing in the chop.
Post Race Debrief – We enjoyed the pontoon party (free booze šincluding Dorset beer) and prizegiving and it was nice of the RORC Commodore ( Deb Fish) to raise a glass with us to recognise Jeepster representing Civil Service sailing. The slightly windswept and tired team dined in style in La Luca, Town Quay for fine pasta and excellent Chianti. āGuinness Manā tried some real ale and experimented by drinking bottled Spanish lager under duress, he was āso braveā š
Lessons – If you put over 250 sailors on one strip of pontoons go barefoot so you can still get to the bar on submerged pontoons.
Sunday ( Race 2) A simple course mainly downwind in a falling 16 to 10 knot WSW wind. Committee boat Start near Magnum, Stoneways Marine (P), East Bramble (S), Finish @ Gurnard line.
A really solid start and had good pace making good tactical decisions to play the gybes to pass Bridge Buoy perfectly off the Needles and exploit the 3.2 knot tide up the main channel through Hurst towards the Solent. We opted to keep North after Hurst to keep out of the worst of the now heavily building foul tide. As the wind speed dropped we could not match the boat speed of others (Jeepster only has an A3 at present) and despite further attempts to optimise our course we finished 39th out of 45 finishers.
Lessons – Be bold, stay in the main channel after Hurst to avoid losing wind. Buy a lottery ticket to fund an A2 š
Results are at these links
Saturday https://myjog.jog.org.uk/raceresults/5ecdfc75-b591-4c1f-bcbd-7e1fb0847ba3?pageSize=50&pageIndex=0
Sunday https://myjog.jog.org.uk/raceresults/7917b94f-eea0-44b0-aca0-92ae75f021aa
You can run a replay of the tracking from the links if you fancy analysing our races.
Summary – I think we proved Jeepster can comfortably get into the results even in a very competitive fleet. We had great fun, a little banter and there were no issues with the boat. We were in touch with other J109s for much of the races. We know CSORC is saving up for some new sails including an A2. There are also plans to try and dial in the fixed and running rigging which Iām sure will help improve our competitiveness further.
