Laser: a hotdog sunset

Raced my Laser again in the Wednesday evening Hotdogs series at South Cerney. Very light, shifty conditions. The sort of stuff I usually do well in. Except the primary line on my outhaul broke on one of the beats.

I keep a safety knife in my buoyancy aid, and the conditions were light enough for me to hold the tiller between my knees, grab the boom and cut away enough of the now redundant string to make a loop out of a few pieces tied together and so jury rig a new outhaul. The foot of the sail was exceptionally baggy though, which was fine off wind, but destroyed my pointing for the two beats of the course.

I reckon it cost me about three minutes. All for the sake of a £3.50 length of dyneema failing on me. The moral of the story is take the time to check your control lines regularly. The irony is that I generally I do, and only replaced the kicker control line and the dyneema traveller at the end of last month.

I finished a sorry 13th, middle of the fleet. One of the other Lasers snuck past me as I was cobbling my boat back together, but I caught him up again on the next lap and got a lucky lift going back up that same beat that let me sneak back past.

Mishaps aside, it was fun to be back out with the Laser. But then, it always is.

And the sunset was absolutely gorgeous.

normalcy resumed

We are back safe and sound. Pulling the passage log together and will post it up here soon. Suffice to say for now that we were exceptionally lucky with the weather, everything went, more or less, spectacularly to plan, dolphins and a seal were involved, and it was an absolutely wonderful trip.

Calstar is back in Portishead, half an hour down the road. Neap tides and balmy weather this coming Saturday, so I think Dad and I are going to take a day sail up under the bridges. It'll be nice if we get a bit of wind, but the tide will wash us up there and back anyway.

Other indications that I'm back and normality has returned is that I went for a run Monday evening, and was back at karate Tuesday evening. 

The deity of metrics that is Strava reckoned our 10 hour, 40 mile passage from the St Maws in the Fal to Newlyn was almost as much relative effort as my 5k run on Monday and twice as much relative effort as last night's karate.

But clearly a different kind of effort. Today I ache. More so than I have in a long time. Two weeks aboard Calstar appear to have left me more out of condition than a six month lockdown. It's not enough to stop me from intending to race my Laser this evening, but I am definitely suffering. 

It's kind of amusing, and oddly, a strangely satisfying sort of discomfort.

Interestingly, my heart rate during yesterday evening's session peaked at 179bpm, which is a bit higher than I've seen either running or sailing. I think 172bpm is the highest I've seen on a run.

The bit that really amused me however, was over the course of the hour session, the gps (which I'd only activated by accident) tracked me covering 4.4km. I don't exactly know why it should have surprised me, but it did.

Self (inflicted) pity aside, in other news, our illustrious leader has delayed the lifting of Covid restrictions by four weeks. I'm not exactly his greatest fan, to allow myself a little bit of understatement, but I can't judge him on this; it is what it is. 

However, I had eight gigs booked between now and end of July. Four of them have now cancelled because of the extended restrictions. Three of them will go ahead subject to restrictions being lifted in four weeks time as currently expected (that's going to be a very busy weekend) and one is going ahead anyway, despite the fact that restrictions will still be in force. So seats will need to be booked in advance, strict limits on numbers, no more than six to a table and wear a mask if you're not sat at yours. No dancing. Unless it's in your seat, at your own table, I guess.

Table dancing meant something completely different when I was a young man.

Calstar: here be dragons

Nikki and I drove down to Plymouth and back last night to deliver my kit bag and a some random bits and bobs to the boat. A six hour round trip was worth it to save me carrying 17 days of spare clothes on my back when Dad and I take the train down to the boat. Train tickets are now booked for he and I, we leave Gloucester at 1908hrs Thursday evening.

Haven't looked at the forecast since the weekend, obviously I will before we go, but don't see the point in stressing myself out about it in the meantime. If we get to Wednesday (ie. tomorrow) and it looks like another Atlantic storm is inbound for next week, we shall seriously consider scrapping our plans and putting Calstar on the back of a lorry. 

I have until the 13th June to get her back to Portishead. If things went south, then I could theoretically abandon her somewhere, get the train back to work, and then use the weekend of the 19th & 20th to finish the trip. After that, life gets very complicated with band and office commitments.

When I did check at the weekend however, things looked very promising for the coming weekend and week to follow.

The original plan was to head to Fowey and spend the weekend there with friends at the Gallants Sailing Club and from the Moth fleet who are also visiting that weekend. But if the weather forecast delivers as promised, we'll call in but won't delay there. Instead, we'll push on to Helford the next day, then around to Newlyn, and from there gather our wits and catch the next tide to take us around Lands End.

It's from there that I'm seriously reconsidering plans.

If the weather remains fair, I'm very, very tempted to use it and just carry on up the Bristol Channel once we're around the corner. Ignore St Ives, skip Padstow and aim straight for Lundy. There we can drop the anchor and wait for a fair tide to take us in to Ilfracombe if we want, or even straight up to Cardiff. Beyond Lundy the tide becomes a significant issue, but if it turns foul before we reach Cardiff, we can always wait it out in Barry.

The leg from Newlyn (waypoint 3 on the chart at the top) to Lundy (waypoint 6) would be, very roughly, about 100nm however. Which, being the harbour hoppers that we are, is significantly longer than any single passage we've ever tried with Calstar before. So quite how I'll manage it with Dad is unknown territory. And, once we commit, with very few bolt holes to opt out in. North Cornwall is, in typically conditions, a very long, very rocky lee shore.

On the other hand, nights are currently short (even if they're not yet warm!) and at an average of 4 knots, which we should manage easily, it's around 25 hours, which doesn't seem too daunting. 

So I think that's the new "Plan A"

Albacore: lee shore blues

The forecast for Sunday was bullish; wind in the south west 20 knots plus but gusting into the 30's. Rain expected, but I didn't really pay much attention to that bit.

I had a late night Saturday night, a great gig, but hard to wind down after so didn't really get to sleep until around 3am. This used to be easy when I was younger, not so much now, but we're still having fun so it's worth the cost. When I did crawl my way out of bed Sunday morning, I messaged Amanda to let her know I was running 20 minutes late. I got to the Club around 1020hrs, by which time she'd got the Albacore out onto the foreshore and had pretty much rigged her.

Fourteen boats launched for the first race, split between three fleets. Ours, the general handicap, was the largest with seven competitors. The course was a good one; a windward start, a nice long first beat down to the bottom of the lake, a broad reach back on starboard, a gybe close to the bank then a port reach across, followed by a second beat back to the bottom and then a dead run back to the final mark behind the clubhouse, trying not to hit the committee boat on the way.

The wind was blustery, low to mid 20's with the occasional lull and more frequent gust, but steady in direction. The Albacore handled it well; with lots of rig tension and generous use of the kicker she seems very manageable in a blow as long as you're prepared to put the work into hiking and spilling the main where you need to, so as to keep her as flat as you can.

The first race was good. A very well sailed Laser 2000, crewed I think by a father and son, led us a good chase around the course. We gained on them easily going up wind, but off the wind they handled their big asymmetric like pros, reaching from gybe to gybe downwind, leaving us for dust. The rest of the fleet quickly fell away behind us both.

We finished with a very creditable 2nd place, the 2000 soundly beating us in the end on both the water and after handicap.

The second race didn't go nearly so well.

About thirty seconds before the start, hardening up to lay the starboard end of the line, hoping to hit it at speed just as the signal sounded the start of the race, we got slammed by a gust. I don't really have any excuse; my head was elsewhere than on the wind and sails, working out our approach to the line, half an eye on the clock, half an eye on the half dozen other boats all vying for the same spot. I was sheeting in fast, I should've been quicker spilling the wind.

So the gust knocked us flat. I rolled backwards over the hull and landed on the centreboard, Amanda went into the water between the hull and boom. From my perch on the board, jib sheet in hand, I stopped the mast from sinking and quickly pulled her back up. She was utterly swamped.

I opened the bailer and the transom flaps, untangled the lines and tried to bear away to begin flushing the water out the back, but there wasn't much room between us and the lee shore. As I hardened up, half a mind preparing to try to tack the swamped boat, another gust hit us and we were down again.

I'd been too far back trying to trim the boat to get directly onto the board, so accepted a dunking and swam around the hull to the centreboard. Amanda threw me a jib sheet, but by the time I'd got myself braced for the retrieve, the mast had bedded into the mud. 

Slowly, slowly, the wind swung the hull around until the mast was pointing to windward. The windage of the hull and my labours were then enough to free the mast, but as she came up, the boom swung viciously over and, unsurprisingly, she topped straight over to leeward again. 

We pulled her back up one more time, but by now she was firm against the lee shore, pushed up against the reeds, the centreboard dug into the rocks and mud at the bottom of the lake, pinning us in place.

We took the mainsail down. It's possible we could've rescued ourselves from there, but the race for us was over anyway, so rather take any further risk of damage to the boat, with a bit of help from some friends on the shore and a line from the safety boat, we towed her off the lee shore and back to the landing area.

Unfortunately, in one of our capsizes, I suspect the third, the boom was driven into the lake bed and buckled. It could've been worse; a boom is significantly cheaper than a mast to replace, and most importantly, neither Amanda nor I were damaged, except perhaps in our pride. I don't think I've ever had to accept a tow off a lee shore from the safety boat before.

The gust that initially flattened us was clocked at 34 knots; if we'd been anywhere else on the course, or even with just a little more sea-room between us and the lee shore, I think we'd have been fine.

I think that's the heaviest weather we've sailed the Albacore in and, damaged boom and pride aside, I was very pleased at how she handled. There were times when the gusts hit as we beat to windward that we were both fully hiked out and spilling so much main that it was doing little more than flogging, the jib alone and the top third of the mainsail driving the boat forward and up wind. But drive she still did.

And off the wind? The reaches were amazing. Spray everywhere, the boat literally skimming across the lake on her bow wave. Our fastest reach clocked in at 12.3 knots.

I'm hoping for a little less wind next weekend.

end of a full week

Another week over. That went kinda fast. But then it's been busy.

Band practice on Monday evening went well. Odds are looking good that we'll get through most of the set tomorrow without forgetting anything, but even if we do, we'll busk around it and it's probable nobody will notice. That's part the charm of live music.

I even managed to fit a 3k run in before the practice. It's the only one I've managed this week however.

On Tuesday evening it was great to have an excuse to put my white pyjamas back on. Got through my first hour back at karate without injuring myself, and didn't feel too wrecked afterwards. As expected, we're not yet allowed contact, so no sparring. So I wore my Garmin through the session to track my heart rate. Purely out of curiosity. 

It peaked at 160bpm, but averaged at 119 across the hour. Interestingly, Strava gives a "relative effort" score to any activities you track. An hour of karate came in at around the same kind of effort I had to put in to running the 3k on Monday. Which surprised me somewhat. Or maybe it didn't.

By comparison, racing the Laser for an hour in moderate conditions is about a third of the effort, but sailing Calstar from Plymouth to Fowey is about the same as an hour of karate, or running 3k. Again, I don't actually know if that surprises me.

Lies, damned lies and statistics is a phrase that springs to mind.

Wednesday evening was a slightly lighter load on the old cardio. The forecast didn't look exactly exciting, and they were stuck for a safety boat driver so I volunteered, manning the RIB to watch over the evening's racing with my mate Mark, a fellow British Moth and Albacore sailor that I might have mentioned before once or twice on this site.

I gave him my old DSLR to play with to keep him quiet. Some of the resulting pictures accompany this post, along with some stills from the GoPro that I clipped to my buoyancy aid. Turns out there was more wind than was forecast; I would've loved to have sailed in it. On the other hand, the view from the safety boat was quite pleasant.

Thursday was my second evening back at karate. Strava reports that I put in even less effort, but it lies. Or was, at least, misled. I tracked the session on my watch again, but forgot to press record until about halfway through. Before that, I noticed my heart rate peak at 177bpm, which just about tops anything I've seen whilst running.

They're just numbers, but I find metrics fascinating.

This morning, my left knee hurts, as in enough to leave me limping, which is unusual. I might've overdone things a little this week. Nikki, as ever, is a font of sympathy. Actually, now I lie. She just rolled her eyes when I complained, said it was self inflicted, and asked me to take the bins out.

She's not daft, that woman. Tonight I'm taking her out to dinner. I'm actually quite excited, as it'll be the first time we've been able to eat out in a restaurant this year.

First gig tomorrow night. It would be disloyal to suggest that excites me more. But as well as being far from daft, she's also a very understanding woman. 

Some would say she has to be, to have put up with me for so long.

SCSC: photo boat

The rain held off. It was, in fact, an absolutely lovely evening; more wind than anticipated, bright sun. I almost regretted volunteering for the photo boat, sorry, I mean safety boat duty. But the company was good, the workload very light, and the view quite lovely.

There are much worse ways to spend a Wednesday evening.

proud parenting

Laser: mark rounding addendum

A photo from the shore giving a different perspective of the mark rounding described in my previous post. I've blatantly nicked it from the club's group chat, so don't know who to credit it to other than South Cerney Sailing Club.

I'm on safety boat duty (again!) this evening. Doesn't look like there's going to be a huge amount of wind, so it shouldn't be terribly exciting. I'm just hoping the rain holds off.

Laser: mark rounding

A series of stills from my GoPro last Sunday. Basically, a leeward mark rounding, and for a change, one of my better ones.

There is an absolute bird's nest of rules that govern the rights of boats racing when they're all approaching the same mark. The usual port / starboard, windward / leeward rules apply, but only until you get to within three boat lengths of the buoy you're all trying to get around.

At which point, rights are determined by overlap. At three boat lengths from the mark, the boats on the outside, regardless of windward / leeward, port / starboard have to give any boat on the inside (ie.  between their boat and the mark) that has an overlap room to sail around the mark.

 

More often than not, the way things spread out, it's just one other boat involved. It can be an opportunity to gain a place or lose a place, but in the overall scheme of things, having to allow room for just one other boat to squeeze in between you and the mark when you go around doesn't make a huge difference, and you very often have the opportunity to sail high and steal their wind on the next leg.

But every so often, a crowd all arrives at the same place at the same time. It can be quite intimidating to be the one guy on the inside with a pile of boats stacking up outside of you, especially if they're all bigger than you. You're relying on every boat on the outside to give enough room for all the boats overlapped on the inside, and you often have to be quite firm in "expressing" your rights to the folks that need to give you water.

But when it works, it is a lovely feeling.

Laser: a full weekend

 

The weather has been all over the place of late, but for the last week or so the wind has at last moved back around into the west. It still feels a bit chilly out of the sun, but the temperature does at least climb into the teens now. On most days.

That said, on Saturday we were hit by a downpour of sleet and hail and then, once back off the water and I was trying to get changed back into my dry cloths in our alfresco changing rooms (ie. the car-park), an absolute deluge of icy rain.

All of this is interspersed with patches of bright sunshine that just seem to tease of the summer still to come. It would be very nice and I'd consider it a personal favour if it could arrive in time for a week Friday.

But I can't complain. The only reason that I think I'm noticing it is because I'm lucky enough to find myself out in it a fair bit. I stood my turn helming the safety boat last Sunday and again Wednesday evening, but got to race both Saturday and Sunday of the weekend just gone.

Saturday was an unplanned, impromptu opportunity taken; an afternoon race I hadn't intended to join but the chance was just too good to not take. I discovered Nikki had to work in the afternoon, so as soon as she'd headed out for her shift, I snuck off down to the lake in time to make the 1415 start of the pursuit race.

The Laser is a good boat for a pursuit at South Cerney. As I think I've mentioned before, every class of dinghy is given a handicap number that reflects how fast or slow it is in relation to every other type of boat it might race against. The lower the number, the faster the boat. With a pursuit race, the race is of a set length (in this case at South Cerney, an hour and a half) and each competitor then has a start time based on their boat's handicap; the slower the class of boat, the earlier you start.

Your position on the water when the time runs out and the race ends determines your finishing position. Basically, the faster boats get to chase the slower boats, who are given a head start proportionate to how much slower they are.

The Laser's handicap at South Cerney is 1100, which gives me plenty of boats to chase, and a few but not too many chasing me. Theoretically, the slower boats should have the advantage of clean air, and unless there's a huge disparity between the performance of the boats concerned, it's easier to hold a position in the front than it is to gain a position from behind.

But in any game of fox and hounds, I think I always prefer to run with the hounds. If you're sailing a slower handicapped boat in a pursuit, from the moment you start you're simply sailing to not lose. If you're sailing a faster handicap though, and therefore doing the chasing, you have to sail to win.

That said, I didn't win. But I had fun. And whilst it's not true that this is all that matters, it is a good consolation prize.

Sunday would normally be an opportunity to race the Albacore with Amanda, but we've damaged the rudder and it was still in the workshop, so I persuaded Amanda to take out one of the Club's Lasers, and I took out my own again.

Conditions were similar to the day before, a bit brighter perhaps, but still with the threat of shows and, although the wind was a little lighter, it was still gusty at times.

The first race went very well until the final lap when I finally got caught and overtaken by my friends Mark and Sue in their Albacore. That wasn't a problem in itself, an Albacore is a much faster class of boat so I still had them beat on handicap, but I then fixated on trying to win my place back from them, and inadvertently followed them to the wrong mark when Mark subsequently got himself confused over the course.

It's kind of amusing; although it was primarily Mark's mistake, I only had myself to blame. If I'd paid attention to my own race rather than trying to beat them at theirs, then I'd have sailed the right course, won my place on the water back from them anyway, and wouldn't have lost a couple of minutes taken on the detour. It wasn't enough time for the boats behind us to catch up, but those couple of minutes lost me two or three places against the faster boats out in front.

The second race went much more to plan, undistracted by Mark, I sailed the correct course this time and managed to take a second place. Better still, unlike the day before, when we came off the water the sun continued to shine, giving me the chance to mow the overgrown grass in the Laser's berth, and then get changed and then Mark, Sue and Amanda on the patio outside the clubhouse for a cold beer.

Cheltenham Open Mic Night

In just over a week's time, on Friday 28th May, Cheltenham Open Mic Night will return live to the floor The Restoration. And I won't be able to be there, as we'll be moving our boat back around the corner of Lands End, from Plymouth to Portishead, weather permitting.

So this is the clip I recorded for their last virtual open mic, which my mate Jack hosted back at the beginning of April.

I left the piano and the classical stuff alone this time, and returned to my old familiar guitar with a couple of covers from the band's set, and one of my own. And still managed to screw a few bits up. But I reckon that's all part of the fun of it.

Three pieces then; Mr Brightside by The Killers, Buck Rogers by Feeder, and a song I wrote back in November last year that I still haven't actually named yet. I guess for now we'll continue to call it Me & You.

Boo

I have a very good friend who names all of his boats "Woo Woo", purportedly after his favourite cocktail. He is a lovely, kind man, but a simple soul, clearly easily amused.

I once spent a very humiliating five or ten minutes trying to call him up on VHF 16 in St Austell's Bay outside Fowey; "Woo Woo, Woo Woo, Woo Woo, this is Calstar, over?"

The adorably handsome blonde in the picture above is called Boo. We fostered him as a puppy, picking him up a few days before Halloween that year and he came to us already named, and whilst it may seem appropriate, whoever named him could've had no idea that he'd come to us on Halloween, so we can't use that as an excuse, although my wife has tried. 

But I'd sooner rename a boat than ever rename a dog. And I'd only ever rename a boat very reluctantly.  Case in point, I've not yet rechristened my unfortunately named Laser and instead simply refer to it as "the Laser", conveniently ignoring the fact that a previous owner did actually name her.

Like a number of our foster dogs, Boo decided to adopt us and stayed. He's eight years old now. He did grow a little fat and lazy in his middle years but has, for the last six months or so been on a diet and has lost a fair bit of weight and is once again trim and energetic. Albeit he is a master of stealing my bed the second I'm out of it of a morning, and assiduously conserving his energy until the exact moment he needs it later in the day when it comes to time for a walk.

I would say the only experience more humiliating than babbling "Woo Woo, Woo Woo, Woo Woo" over channel 16 on the VHF in an effort to call up a friend's boat, is wandering around the local park of an evening, trying to call your dog back.

When your dog's name is "Boo".