The Weekend Cometh

Decision point. Double tide out on the estuary on Sunday; high water around 7am and 7pm respectively. Which means we could explore down channel from Lydney and still get back before dark.

Downside is that we've not been that way before so, whilst exploring unknown waters elsewhere isn't really a worry, dealing with the huge tides of the Severn Estuary on a 19' open sailing boat is not a challenge to be taken on lightly or in ignorance.

High water Sunday evening for the return is an 11.58m rise to deal with. And, of course, the thing with springs is that the high tides are HIGH and the low tides LOW, do there will be shoals and sandbanks galore to navigate.

In our favour is the weather forecast. It's going to blow like buggery tonight and tomorrow, and tomorrow brings the rain. But by Sunday it's supposed to drop off to a relatively moderate F3 southwesterly, a warmish day with sunny intervals. Perfect, in many ways, for a down-channel adventure.

We've discussed it, Dad and I, and have decided the decision will swing on whether or not we can convince any other boats out of Lydney to come down with us.

It's not looking promising so far.

However, the alternative plan is for H and I to race Penny in the Frampton Paddle, which is part of the club's Dave Evans Championship series. I don't normally sail enough of them to qualify, but this year looks like it may prove the exception.

We're currently ranked 5th out of 52 entries so far, but that's going to change as the series progresses and more boats qualify. If we can finish with a top 10 result by the end of the year then I'll be very happy as that will be a very satisfactory conclusion against what it usually a very strong  field.

But I digress. Bottom line is that I don't know what I'm doing on Sunday but whatever it is, it's going to be fun anyway.

Of Blue Skies and Warm Winds

The weekend just gone turned into the perfect end to a week sweltering in the office, staring out of the window at gorgeous, cobalt blue skies and the rustling trees, watching the glory of a British summer pass me by, tantalisingly close but just out of reach beyond the self-imposed prison bars of weekdays 9 till 5.

Friday hit, the weekend came crashing in, and miraculously and completely out of character, the weather held.

Saturday was an Open Day at Frampton Sailing Club, so we spent the day on the water giving joy-rides to visiting members of the public in the Club training boats; Gull Esprits and Wanderers. A stiff warm breeze and bright sunshine, it was everything sailing should be and a perfect advert for our sport and the club. We usually snare a handful of new members out of these events. I'm pretty certain from the feedback of the day that this one will turn to be no exception in that respect.

It was also the first day of the year of sailing in shorts and T-shirt. Hope there are many more to come!

I then had a gig that night in Bristol. Unusually, my wife Nikki had the night off from work so was able to come out to the gig with us. We had the full band, all members present and correct for a change; they played well and the music went down a storm with the crowd. A late night, but fun.

FOSSC Open Day

Sunday was the last day of Race Training for H, so she wanted to race single-handed again for the same reasons as before. Although that left Penny and I crewless and grounded, it's a small loss for a significant gain. The boost to her self-confidence, boat awareness and handling skills from both the course and the time spent sailing racing solo has been significant and marked, and is gaining us places when we do get to race with Penny.

Perfect Weekend Weather

I had the option of racing the Europe, who is, it must be said, weathering very well despite my continual neglect, but the forecast was for the strong Saturday blow to drop to a force 3 northeasterly by Sunday, and it remained a constant prediction through the week, and my friend Hayley was game for another blast around the Severn with her Wanderer again. No contest really.

"I've got no strings to tie me down" [FALSE]

Sunday was a due relatively small tide of 6.6m, nearing neaps, high water expected at Lydney for 12.27hrs, so we agreed to meet up at the yacht club for 10:00hrs. There was more wind in the morning than I'd expected, a definite force 4+, but still from the northeast as promised, so we erred on the side of caution and put a reef in the mainsail. Hayley's only just returning to sailing after some very serious surgery to her spine at the end of last year, so to risk any kind of upset on the water would have been irresponsible.

Drying Out

We launched with the vague plan of seeing how far up river we could get before the tide turned. With the wind set against the flood tide, the tidal flow of the Severn added 5kts to the windspeed, pushing it up another factor to a clear F5 and setting up a steep, breaking chop over the tidal races in the river. Peter and John were manning the Club rescue boat 'Braveheart', James was launching his Enterprise behind us, and there were a couple of SARA RIBS (Severn Area Rescue Association) out on exercise, one of them ambling over to us in curiosity to watch as we launched.



Admiraly Chart 1166



Despite the many witnesses we launched without mishap, got the foils down and set off across the river on a close reach towards Panthust Pill, waves crashing over the foredeck, thoroughly dowsing us in brackish spray. A double-masted motorsailor, tender in tow, was approaching Sharpness in the channel so we tacked away before we got too close and confused them with our intentions and headed upriver in a series of loose beats and close reaches, footing off for speed rather than height and letting the rush of the tide push us up river as much as our point of sail.

The third beat took us past Old Sharpness Dock where we saw the SARA boys preparing to recover one of their RIBS over the wall. Our next tack took us out towards Wellhouse Rock in a short beat before we tacked away again before getting caught up in the chop of the overfalls below the rock. A couple more tacks and we were past Purton, with the GPS on my mobile topping out with a maximum speed (VMG) of 9.36kts at one point. Not bad for upwind against a gusty F4 in a reefed 14' dinghy, and more credit to the flood tide than our sailing I suspect!

Past Purton and Tites Point, the centreboard began to ground out on the sandbank off The Royal Drift, a reminder that despite the ferocity and height of the tide we were close to neaps and vulnerable to, as the Admiralty Chart so sweetly describes this area of the river, "Changing Depths". The time was a few minutes before midday, so another half hour before top of tide, but rather than push on with the river and our luck we tacked and then bore away, reaching back across the river against the flood, surfing down the steep, breaking swell still being kicked up by the wind over tide.

We spent the next forty-five minutes tearing along on the plane in a series of broad reaches, the boat speed exhilarating but the actual speed over ground low and making them last forever with the tide now punching against us. Eventually the inevitable happened and the tide turned (again, as the Admiralty Chart relates, "There is practically no slack water" in this part of the world) and with the ebb the wind died to a whisper and the churning waters smoothed out to flat. We dropped off to a run and, goose-winging the jib, headed back to Lydney Harbour.



10.76nm covered in 2:20hrs afloat, 4.81kts avg VMG



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.

February on Ice

February. Not a fan of the month myself.

Sat on the cusp of another bout of man-flu and twitchy because the lake was frozen over this last weekend so I didn't get to sail the Ent. Mind you, if I'm twitchy, then I think my crew is positively rebelious with frustration.

I say crew, but actually our roles have been reversed since the last race on New Year's Day. She's been put forward by our Club for a place on the RYA Dinghy Instructor course they'll be running at the end of this coming summer, so I've been tasked with getting her boat handling up to scratch.

The outcome of this is that I'm playing crew and she's practicing on the helm, and she'll helm two out of the three Spring series coming up at Frampton. She'll do fine, but meanwhile we need to take every oportunity we can for practice, which isn't such a hardship as she's absolutely addicted to being out on the water and the cold, bleak midwinter is no deterent to her enthusiasm, so in that respect we're kindred spirits (and therefore equally bad for each other!)

So the freeze of last weekend was nothing short of a personal disaster. With luck, the water will thaw through the week despite the sub-zero evening tempretures, otherwise, I don't think we'll hear the end of it!

That said, even if the ice does draw back, the forecast is currenty suggesting the weekend wind is going to be pants anyway. Perfect excuse to go play with the Lasers perhaps. If our messing around with a Feva the other week was anything to go by, she needs a lot of centre-main practice, but there's every chance that anything stiffer than a light breeze will prove very, very wet!