Race to Yarmouth with Jog
Purple Mist
Skipper: Kate Cope
Sat 18 May 2019 20:47
Compared to AZAB (2400 miles) a race to Yarmouth from Cowes (20miles) should be a doddle. However to make any race boats go you need wind and today there was very little about this morning.
The first attempt to start JOG class 4 was aborted as too many boats were OCS ( =over the line) we were a little way back so on the restart it gave us a chance to get closer. Even closer with such a strong tide it took us, and many others , 4 minutes and lots of tacks to get over the line. First mark was east knoll so we headed off straight over the top of Bramble bank ...this is ok as it was high tide.
Round the first mark we had a good swop to the code zero and thought we were doing ok until a J105 came past. Just before the mark our friends on Azygos had overtaken us ...neither of us know where their wind came from
Then it was a long leg down to Newton creek, initially the boats that stayed north like Mzungu looked like they had more wind but then the wind dropped for all of us and the better course was the south side with the tide taking us to the mark. By this time we felt a long way back but we beat Mzungu to the mark.
Then we were in luck , a lot of the lead boats had been swept past the next mark on the tide. We zoomed across on the code zero and nearly made the mark but the wind died and it was too close , I turned downwind but then lost speed so joined the pile of boats trying to gybe there way round the mark . This was really frustrating as we had the chance to sweep by the fleet.
Third time lucky we made it
The it was 2 tacks to round the last mark and we were finished
I was delighted to be 3rd out of 11 in doubled handed class and 11/16 in class 4 though only 5 minutes of 6th place
Same again tomorrow as we race home