Tourist

Swansea: a grim Saturday morning

The one day we had clear to go sailing and the weather did this to us. Could've gone out anyway, but didn't want to risk breaking anything.

Really missing Calstar. It's been over a month now since we last sailed her, which was the delivery to Swansea. We're keeping her down there until September; new waters to explore. Just need a bit of a break with the weather.

And a bit of a break from work to go with it.

Next planned date is the weekend of 23rd/24th, and perhaps a trip over to Ilfracombe and back.

She scrubs up nice

Red Arrows

And After The Squall

Monochrome

White pyjamas

Rainbows

Rooftops

Happy Father's Day me

Back to where it all began

This weekend Dad and I take Calstar back to where it all began: Swansea.

About 15 months ago, on a cold, calm day, we brought her up from there on a single spring tide with the help of Dave, a very able skipper from Swansea Yacht Club to assist us. That was the last time anybody but me has been in full command and control of my boat.

Because of a lack of wind and the need to cover 60nm within 10 hours, we used the engine all the way up.

We're taking two days to get back down. Not much wind forecast, so I suspect Sunday will be mostly under power, so we'll be going back the same way we came out.

Although it's another spring tide, it's a smaller one, and we'll be running against it's march. Coming up channel the tide chases you, being earlier in the west than it is in the east. In terms of our usual speed over the ground, this cuts about an hour of usable tide off heading down, and adds an hour heading back up.

So we're splitting the journey across two tides.

Getting down to Cardiff is fine. I can, of course, all but to that in my sleep by now. It's the Swansea leg on Sunday that I'm worried about.

My preference would be to make Barry on the first ebb instead of Cardiff, and drop the hook in the harbour there. That gets us beyond the race at Lavenock Spit and puts us in a good position to slide down the tidal escalator that runs along the north side of the Bristol Channel with the outing tide.

Dad has made it very clear his preference is for a pontoon and a pub for Saturday night, so we'll be stopping off at Penarth in Cardiff Bay instead.

I have some sympathy with his point of view, and think we should still manage the second leg, but it will involve punching the tide a couple of hours at one end or possibly both, which will mean doing so under power.

Then again, with a need to average 5kts over the ground to make the tidal gate, there's every chance we'll need to use the engine for most of the way if not all. And if I've got my sums wrong, or missed anything in my plans and estimates, we won't do it in one tide.

I do hope Saturday night's stop-over in Penarth doesn't come around to bite us come Sunday. If it does, it'll be my fault - I have the final say on where we stop Saturday night. Trouble is, you tempt me with the offer of a pontoon and a pub and, well, I guess I am indeed my Father's son. Well, a pub at least, I'm quite ambivalent towards the pontoon.

I do need to get to Swansea in time to make the boat secure and catch the last train home Sunday evening, as I have to work Monday morning.

To me, sailing is supposed to be all about the journey, not the destination. However, in this present time so much of my sailing seems to be racing the clock and the tide.

It won't always be so.

Serrated

photo: ken elsey

Unfortunately, we didn't race Buffy yesterday evening. My crew Hels is poorly, having caught some kind of fluey type bug that has grated her vocal chords and seriously impeded her ability to call "Starboard!", so rather than hunt around for a substitute crew, I decided spend an evening in with my wife. I'm away for the weekend coming with Dad, so I thought it was the appropriate thing to do.

Nik seemed quite pleased to see me, then she got a call from a friend, wished me a pleasant evening in, and informed me she was off out to play bingo. Not a game I profess to understand, but each to their own and I do understand the priority hobbies take, so I don't really have grounds for complaint. At least it wasn't Valentine's Day.

 

photos: ken elsey

Hels and I did race last week though. A light, shifty, failing breeze so typical of a Wednesday evening, stirring the waters just enough to serrate the reflections of our sails as we ghosted about the lake. The sky was overcast, a dull slate of flat low clouds, but the evening was warm and alive with clouds of dancing of sand martins and the occasional swallow as they swooped and gorged and feasted over the waters of the lake.

We had a great race. A good start, almost as much by design as by accident, saw us moving on the gun and in clean air, and beating "Ghost", the only other Enterprise on the water, clean to the windward mark. Ahead of the pack, we maintained our advantage, sometimes lengthening our lead, sometimes surrendering lengths of it reluctantly as the lottery of zephyrs fell in our favour or did not as the chance went.

photo: ken elsey

The other two racing fleets, starting four minutes and eight minutes behind us respectively, caused some complications, initially as our downwind leg crossed their first windward as they were all bunching up to jostle around the mark that lay dead on our own course, and then later as the faster boats amongst them began to catch us up and interfere with our wind. But they got in the way of Ghost as much as they did in ours, and so for a change Buffy's crew maintained their focus and concentration, and jealously guarded their lead through to the end.

photo: ken elsey

It's always a pleasure beating Geoff and Sue in Ghost, only because it doesn't happen too often. We do break ahead frequently enough, but Geoff is a canny helmsman, ever so quick to capitalise on the slightest lapse or mistake on our part, so it's unusual for us to win and keep a lead like that throughout a whole race.

Some things you can't beat though, and the RYA handicap system is one of them. If we had a good race, Pete and his Comet had a better one, and thrashed us hands down once times were adjusted for our respective handicaps, leaving us in 2nd place and Ghost in an honourable 3rd.