Regatta Weekend

Busy weekend this.   A general lack of organisation has led to a hasty arrangement of Regatta activities.  I suppose this was bound to happen as club life  has been severely disrupted  by  the ongoing refurbishment works. It's a shame that we are not quite finished in time but hey ho that's life.

The sailing went with not too much trouble, weather was a bit exciting on the Saturday and we got involved in a mayday calll as did several boats responeding to a "persons in the water" call from Portland Coastguard. It turned out to be divers in the water and a false alarm.

Sunday was queiter and after racing we had an official opening of the new training room by Rodney Pattisson  just after Ben Ainsley won his 4th Gold Medal.

Thursday Racing

It seemed like it was going to be a dull evenings racing, as I struggled to get away from buckshore.  By the time the race started it was getting quite fiesty.  On an upwind/downwind course it made for some exciting stuff.  It was almost inevitable that a couple of collisions occured.

Red Devils and Fireworks

We missed the fireworks on Saturday, us being in Cherbourg at the time.  It was a busy time today, with gig racing early evening,  the Red devils Parachute team at 8:30 then fireworks at 9:45pm  all this and two golds at the olympics.  It's hard to keep up.  

Alas, coming home

Forecast   SW F4-5 pretty much all the way.  

Flying along

0630  English time and off we set,  the calm before the storm.   well  heavy shower.  About an hour out of Cherbourg, Lou asleep again Full sail up, all of a sudden it's getting dark and the wind has just hit 23 knots,   quickly put a reef in main and genoa back to cockpit to find 28knots registering, another reef in genoa and we are flying along boat speed hits 10.6kts, luckily we're going downwind.  That was the only drama of the day as the wind died down to a more manageable F4-5 and the weather gradually got brighter.

Force 5 -6 and coffee steady as a rock

There was I thinking I hadn't seen much in the way of big ships when 4 buggers in a box formation decided to descend upon me. A bit of manouvering was required. Worse than a port start on a gusty thursday evening  race. (I was on port).

Faint circle in sky is the red arrows over Swanage

A sudden squeal of delight as Lou spots the red arrows, well at least the big smoke ring drawn in the sky. At that point we were still 2.5 hours from home

15:30 and we are back on the mooring.  Hey Ho Holidays over.