Easter weekend: the remains

With our Gloucester plans for Calstar blow away with the forecast storms, the remainder of the Easter Holiday required a little rethink but was by no means wasted.

Saturday night was always planned to be a break in the sailing for a gig anyway, so required the least adaptation. It was fun, a good night but quieter than usual. I think a combination of bad weather and a four day weekend meant most folks either stayed in or had gone away elsewhere for Easter. We enjoyed ourselves through. And a lull in the weather meant the drive home afterwards back up the motorway wasn't too bad at all.

Sunday, and the weather was still squally ahead of the big stuff expected for Monday. With conditions too rough to take Calstar out, Ben and I headed over to the lake at Frampton to race "Buffy", our Enterprise dinghy. The wind was laying predominantly in the south west, sometimes lulled, other times blowing hard, with white horses dancing in serried ranks across the lake.

We threw the first race; I didn't check, so didn't realise our handicap had changed with the new season, so started the pursuit race 30 seconds too early. We sailed the race anyway, but would have placed poorly regardless. About halfway into the hour a vicious squall blew through the fleet, knocking us and most of the others flat. The other boats, single-handers all, come up dry. An Enterprise comes up from a capsize swamped and spends the next lap or so labouring through the water like a pregnant cow whilst the autobailers struggle to work their magic.

We were treated to a gorgeous rainbow as we came ashore from the race for lunch.

The second race of the day was a set of three class races running alongside each other. The holiday weather had culled our numbers, so each race had only a couple of boats competing; three races, six boats in total. In the handicap "fleet" against us was Phil in his RS Aero. It's a much faster, more modern and lighter single-hander, so the race was reduced to a time trial; we beat Phil (and everybody else) to the windward mark, but after that he powered away from us and we were left racing the clock. The weather remained squally, unpredictably foul tempered and intermittently violent.

photo: leslie pedrick

The thing about racing one on one is that there is no second place, not really. You either win, or you lose. About half way through, Phil had a three minute lead on us, and was still pulling away. As a squall tipped us in again off a bad gybe, it looked very much like we were going to lose. Except the same squall pitch-poled Phil's Aero, and although the much lighter, self-draining hull is much easier to recover from a capsize than our old, wooden Ent, you've got to catch it first. The toppled Aero was bowled away with the wind and Phil couldn't swim fast enough. Accepting assistance from the safety boat, he had to retire. We righted our own capsize without much drama, and spent the next couple of laps cumbersomely draining the water from our flooded hull. But as the last man standing, winning the race after that was but a simple matter of hanging in until the end.

Bank Holiday Monday was a lazy day. Walked the dogs. Listened to the wind howling about the house, sprawled out on the sofa with the dogs chain-watching episodes of Spooks on Netflix. Quite out of character for me.

It was quite lovely.

Rosemunde Cup

Well, the forecast started out promising at the beginning of last week, with the tease of a lot of wind for Sunday's racing. Then, as the week progressed, the weathermen in their wisdom revised, and by the time the day itself arrived, we were sat looking at a muddled and shifty F2/F3 out of the northeast. Then again, a bad day on the water pretty much beats a good day anywhere else.

The first race of Frampton's Rosemunde Cup was a general handicap that saw 26 boats a the start line with what seems to be becoming the usual distinctive port bias. With such a congested line, we decided to pick our spot early and wait, going for a conservative mid-line position. It almost ended badly as all the smaller, lighter single-handers accelerated away, rolling over us as we struggled to find our wind. However, as we dropped out of the back of the mosh-pit, we took advantage of the space for an early tack onto port to find clear air, picking up the shifts just right and soon fought a little way ahead of the gaggle to round the windward mark with the front half-a-dozen boats.

Frampton uses a colour system for identifying the racing marks, with Green, White, Red and Yellow set in each of the north, east, south and west corners of the lake respectively, and intermediary Green/White, Red/White, Red/Yellow and Green/Yellow marks between them. 

The windward mark set for the first race was Green, and is notorious because of its position around a dogleg corner of the lake, the air heavily shadowed by the surrounding foilage and macliously interfered with by a large tree on the inner corner of the elbow.

I tend to think of it as the Frampton Oubliette.

It was exactly this situation that saved us in the first race of the Enterprise Open a couple of weeks ago when all our visitors sailed into it and we sailed past, gleefully giggling like mad, demented things.

This time it bit back.

The few boats ahead pushed through the wind shadow and out onto the run down to white. We followed, and just as we goosewinged and trying to find our wind, the rest of the massed fleet rounded behind us, blocking our air. We stalled and they rolled over us, heckling as our happless burgee spun in witless circles at the top of our mast.

It could have been worse. Once recovered we did what we could to repair the damage, careful to avoid any more holes in the pressure, and finished with a mid-fleet position, but at 14th place this one was to become our discard. The OOD improved the course for the pursuit race that followed, and the wind picked up, but then, inexplicably, restored the original race order for the final handicap just as the wind was fading again, so we were reduced once more to dodging holes and wind shadows in the lee of the windward bank.

Our final result of the day was 10th place out of 27 qualifying boats, so I'm quite content. There were three boats ahead of us in the results that I feel 'Penny' should be beating by now, and one or two further ahead that we can now beat on occasion. The conditions of the day with a F2/F3 northerly however are, looking back over the logs, proving to be our most challenging. In a blow, Penny's weight is less of a disadvantage against the rest of the handicap fleet, and once we're reduced to a drift we just seem to be able to switch a gear and conjour pace out of nowhere. I suspect our relatively light crew weight and my few years of racing a British Moth probably helps.

Of course, all this means that what we really need to practice for consistancy is exactly these sorts of conditions. And, ironically, they've been the prevailing conditions for this season so far, which is showing in our results overall. So much for the promise of spring gales.

Chasing Rainbows

Whilst the wind had died off somewhat by the time we made it to the lake, there was still some life left in the beast, and the accompanying combination of squally showers and low lying sun made for some pretty sailing at times. We spent part of the evening practicing starts and the windward beat against the clock, and the rest of it reaching up and down across the lake like mad silly demented things.

One clumsey gybe saw us tip in and swamp the boat, but plenty enough wind for the bailers to deal with it. Haven't worked out what I'm doing in the gybe to cause the capsize, other than trying it in heavy weather. It's happening a lot however when the wind's up, so need a bit of sustained heavy weather to go out and practice gybing in to see if we can iron out the problem.

Yeah, I know. Any old excuse!

On Home Ground

With last Sunday bringing light, shifty, drifty conditions, a small fleet of eight boats and all very practised, accomplished racing crews, our second ever Enterprise Open with 'Penny' was always going to be a challenge. After the brutalities of the previous Bristol Corinthian event, where, truth be told, we only managed to salvage our way back from last place through bloody-mindedness and attrition by simply refusing to give up and go in when saner souls had long since retired, I was feeling somewhat doubtful of our ability to even keep up.

To our theoretical advantage, this event was on our home water, but that just plied on the pressure. To fail to turn in a respectable performance here was going to say something definite about both 'Penny' and us, her crew.

The order of the day was seet as two back-to-back races, followed by lunch, followed by another couple of back-to-backs. We made a point of getting to the line in good time, got a feel for the conditions and worked out the layline for a conservative committee end start on starboard, getting a good feel for the timing on this line. Which was my first cardinal mistake, and should have cost us the race.

Twenty seconds before the starting gun went, I tacked onto starboard just inside the layline I'd worked out, set on making a timed run at the line. And the half-a-dozen other boats that had opted to instead queue on it waiting for the gun put up a big wall that sucked the already light air out of everything downwind of them, killing our sails and leaving us becalmed. The gun went off, the rest of the fleet launched itself over the line, heading or the windward mark, and I was left struggling to put way back on, spitting and cursing at my stupidity for getting into such a daft position in the first place.


Enterprise 19632 'Penny'

In the end, it would be generous to say we were only a minute late crossing the line. We tacked immediately onto port to try and make what good we could out of our now clean air, but it looked like the damage was done, we pushed on, bleakly hoping for the chance to catch the back of the fleet. Moral of the story; in light airs never let yourself get more than a couple of boat lengths behind the line, clean air is everything. What really sucks is that I'd already known this, I'd been here before years back in the Moth, and so should've known better.

I don't remember the windward mark rounding. We might, by then, have caught up with one of the stragglers, but I'm not entirely sure. If not, we caught him not very many moments later. But then, at the top of the second beat, it all miraculously came good. The entire fleet ahead of us sailed into a hole at the green mark (on days like this I like to think of it as the Frampton oubliette). There was much shouting of "Windward!" and "Starboard!" and sundry cursing and grunting as boats becalmed, backed up, hung up on the mark and each other and then the melee drifted a boat length or two away from the mark as they struggled to sort themselves out, leaving us just enough room to round it inside them and sneak ahead behind the one other solitary boat that was able to sail clear.

From almost last to almost first in the space of the first lap. It's little moments of redemption like this that I utterly love and adore in sailing. As one of the other helms that day observed, nobody's safe until they've crossed the finish line.

Lessons learnt from the first race, our start in the race following was almost text-book, setting us up as the second boat around the windward mark. Our fortunes reversed in the third race, when we were badly headed on a close fetch just before we reached the mark, and subsequently becalmed in the shadow of the nearby windward bank, suffered the indignity of most of the rest of the fleet sailing over us.

Against such a strong field we were never going to hold the advantage, but we held our own against most, and matched Geoff and Sue, beating them twice for their two wins against us. In doing so, we exceeded our ambition for the day; I'd set it at simply not coming last, but H over-ruled me, scolding my lack of ambition, and said that we'd instead aim to keep up with Geoff. In the end, we matched them for overall points, but lost out by a single point after discard, the decisive moment only coming in the last leg of the very last race when they overhauled us and the boat ahead on the reach down to the final mark, having been otherwise left behind for the rest of the course. It was a fine comeback for them and a fair win over us, the resulting second place giving them the edge they needed to finally beat us overall.

It was, in summary, possibly the most enjoyable day's racing I've had in quite a while. Splendidly close, tactical and competitive, we made a few mistakes, leant a few lessons and consolidated on lessons and experiences already previously learnt and turned them into places. And, in keeping up with and in contention with the rest of the fleet throughout, redeemed both ourselves and 'Penny' following the brutality and attrition of the previous Enterprise Open in Bristol.

The next Enterprise event is Thornbury Regatta in early June, out on the Estuary. That's going to be different again and will bring with it all sorts of new and different challenges.

I can't wait.

BCYC Enterprise Open

BCYC, Axbridge Reservoir

Funny old beast, our Enterprise "Penny". After Dad sold the Wanderer and traded up to the Drascombe I really missed the ready access to a relatively nimble double-hander (relative to a Drascombe Lugger that is) if only for want of a 'social' boat to sail with any friends and the
occasional guests I might bring to the Club.

So when H suggested they had the same problem and so we went halves on an old Enterprise it seemed like the perfect solution. Neither of us planned to race her much, let alone travel away with her.

We only sailed the one race for the fun of it, just for a taste. Seemed the perfect way of trying the boat out to see how well she floated. Didn't actually place very well, but discovered that we had a blast sailing together. And that's pretty much when the addiction took hold.

My poor old single-handed Europe has languished under cover ever since as we've compulsively raced the Enterprise at every opportunity and every weekend we could, to the point that I'm seriously considering selling the Europe, previously my pride and joy. And last Sunday even saw us travel away to Bristol Corinthian Yacht Club on Axbridge Reservoir for an Open event, the first of a campaign of about half a dozen such trips we have planned for this season.

We didn't fare too well. 9th place out of about 11 boats, and no worse mainly because the deteriorating conditions saw retirements in the second and third races, else we'd likely have ended last. We only actually beat one boat on the water, finishing the first race in 10th, and that was by the skin of our teeth in the first race, catching them on the last mark rounding and just scraping ahead over the line with mere seconds to spare.

But beat them we did and a win is a win.

The second race was absolute carnage. The conditions had deteriorated with heavy rain and a gusting 35kt wind kicking up a breaking swell on the mile wide Axbridge reservoir. We capsized twice before the start, the second time in the critical thirty seconds before the final starting gun, so that set the scene with us late to the line and firmly at the back of the back of the fleet with little to no chance of catching up.

The beats were brutal, and with all but two exceptions, saw all of our many, many capsizes as we were frequently overpowered and flattened. On the second lap, one of the boats ahead capsized at the windward mark, giving us the briefest of chances to catch up and restore a little of our battered dignity. But in vain, as a clumsy attempt to bear away between them and the mark saw us bowled over in similar style and despite my making the centreboard and leaning back for all I was worth,
the wind pushed us into a total inversion.

As she rolled over, H popped out from underneath the upturning hull with bare seconds and mere inches to spare, face bedraggled, eyes wide and breath spluttering as she valiently fought to master the panic that must have come with the experience of her first inversion. I managed to stop the centreboard from dropping into its case by scrabbling at it with my fingernails. With the board up for leverage and me on top of the upturned hull, we slowly pulled her back up, literally swam into the swamped cockpit, untangled the sheets, released the transom flaps and kicked the bailers down, bearing away on to the previously planned run and back into the race.

Although I'm not certain, I think the other Enterprise retired after recovering from her own capsize. I think that's what secured our 9th place finish overall.

If the beats were brutal however, the reaches were to die for, with Penny screaming along on the plane, the spray so thick in my face that I could barely see the foredeck let alone the mark we were aiming for.

We endured; by the third lap I'd lost count of how many times we'd been knocked down and bowled over, but each time we recovered and pressed on, and just managed to avoid getting lapped by leading boat in the fleet.

The finishing line came as quite the relief, four retirements from the fleet leaving us in 7th place despite being last over the line. However, exhausted and reaching the end of our physical and emotional limits we retired from the third race prior to the start.

So we were beaten in the end, by both the boat, the wind, the water and most of the rest of the fleet. But it was a fantastic day out and a terrific experience to race Penny against such a competative fleet on a water so much larger and more exposed than our own. I think we both learnt loads, and whilst the experience may have gotten the better of us this time, we'll definitely be back for more.

The next Open Meeting is in just over a week's time, but this time on home territory at Frampton, so we'll have to see how we do there. Can't wait.