Day Two

This was the second of the three race days. After Friday, the racing results in the sailing Club showed that of the fourteen working boats taking part we finished 9th in the first race and 5th in the second race giving us an overall position of 7th.

The weather report for Saturday was warm and sunny with a gentler force 3-4 wind than had been the case the previous day.

Race One

Our crew was Skipper Rob, mainsheet Gavin, Jib and runners Chris and James first race, [Chris and Vicky second race], staysail and foredeck, Iain. A crew of five; not our usual crew of six or seven, but with the calmer conditions and with everyone helping each other it worked very well.

We were also sharing the day with “Armed Forces Day” in Falmouth.

Having made slight changes to the rigging of the topsail to help improve our down wind performance we were out in the Carrick Roads early for some tacking practice.

During this time we were joined by the other racing boats, and I heard a strange sound which turned out to be from bag pipes. When I located the sound, it was coming from Victory where a man was standing on the foredeck playing Scotland the Brave on his bag pipes!!!.

The courses for the championships are triangle, sausage, triangle. The course for this race was a start off the St Mawes shore, windward mark off Black Rock and wing mark off St Mawes Castle.

We made a good start about halfway down the fleet and throughout the race we made good progress, and we were particularly pleased with our improvement on the runs and our speed in putting up the pole.

After a very enjoyable race we finished with a group of other boats in 8th place over the line but with our handicap this put us in 3rd place!

Race Two

The weather conditions and course remained much the same for the afternoon race. Again we started about the middle of the fleet and worked our way past several boats due to clever tacking from Rob.

During the first triangle round we were entertained by the displays for Armed Forces Day which all took place immediately over the Carrick Roads where we were sailing. First came a parachute team streaming red, white, and blue trails behind them. Next came a lengthy amazing display by the Red Arrows followed by displays from Typhoon fighter jets flying faster than the speed of sound. The noise was horrendous. Next came Merlins and finally a Chinook helicopter. It was very hard to concentrate and to hear instructions from our skipper.

By the time we were approaching the end of the sausage leg we were in 2nd place. Moon was way ahead of the fleet, and we finished quite close to a group of other boats giving us a 5th over the line and 3rd on handicap.

Another very enjoyable sail setting up Evelyn well placed for the fifth and final race on Sunday.

Many thanks to Rob, and all the crew for a great day’s racing.