The traffic beating out of Hamble River was like the A303 yesterday - Busy! Lots of yachts motoring out of the River, but they are respectful of our little craft. From Hamble River SC you have to sail out the river and turn left, out along So'ton Water to the rac area in the Solent. It took the fleet about an hour to reach the start area located in the Solent with a good force 4-5 blowing and everyone planing hard.
The first start was abandoned for some incident that happened along the line – but the second start gets everyone off fairly. We are second through the gate, so going up the left of the beat hoping for an early wind shift. But there aint none, and we’re not going particularly fast in the nasty chop which also makes tacking very costly. We try to wriggle our way right, where it seems to be favoured, but too many tacks leaves us about 15 at the first mark.
We don't seem to be matching the top boats for speed upwind in this windy weather, but we can catch a few on the reaches. We finish in the mid teens, but a few boats ahead fail to finish and hand us a 12th. The boats ahead that didn't finish were all trying to avoid being 10th - the reason being that the 10th boat becomes the 'pathfinder' for the gate start in the next race which will be the first to count in the series. Stuart Hudson wins the race.
The results can e found through the HRSC website - click on the link on the right.
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