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Friday 27 April 2012

Breezy April Sunday

Finally a day dawned, with Sun, a fresh breeze and a rising tide, could probably have done without the tide rising but that's another tale. The Boat was about as prepared as it has ever been, although I was shortly to find out one of my modifications wasn't up to speed, but never the less here I was at the waters edge, nervously considering a launch.
I'm not sure wether it was my kite accident, or the early years messing with an MPS trying to launch, but I do get serious 'butterflies' before launching. The same nerves that used to plague me whist sitting on the back of a ski boat from the days when the next event was a fifty mile race being dragged all over the ocean.
Mouth dry, looking around, wondering wether to ask for help or not, then suddenly spotting a flat spot about to happen in the shore break, I swung the nose and charged it into the water, whilst pulling on the yards of jib sheet more than I really need, to try and get the jib to bite and tug us over the first wave, which duly occurred.
This really was the first serious sea test, it was blowing about a Four maybe pushing Five, which is enough to kick up sizeable wave shaped objects which likely would disrupt all attempts at smooth sailing.
So with my usual panic to get the rudder down, I set off without a centreboard down, wondering why it felt so weird, the sheeting was stiff as well, I'd run an excess of sheet forward past the kicker strop and as the kicker tensioned it inhibited the run of the mainsheet. Then I had to stop to put the centreboard down, realised there wasn't enough mainsheet to fully sheet out and promptly lost the end of the sheet back through the pulley just as the jib uncleated and began its staccato machine gun chatter, at this point irrational fear of some other imminent disaster had to be suppressed by digging deep for resolve and pushing that 'stay calm and think carefully' button we all have for such emergencies at sea.
So eventually head to wind I managed to regain some control, in the rush I'd misrouted the main sheet, I'd managed to half secure the jib, enough to get under way and leave the lee shore far enough behind to regroup.
There then followed some of the most enjoyable yachting about I'd experienced, control issues aside, she felt really well balanced, happy to sit at an attitude that neither dug the opposite rail in, nor sat too flat to squat. The nose happily reared up and over rather than crashing through head waves upwind, the bear off was a tad scary without adequate jib control, but the acceleration surge was white knuckle inducing, definitely a thrill ride this.
As I was hooning about for half an hour or so, getting accustomed to a handful of power being delivered by 14 sq mtrs of Vortex main and Alto jib, the rest of the fleet were assembling themselves for the race start.
It is a weakness of mine, never to sail dinghies or any long sail powered race craft aimlessly about simply for the fun of it for long, so I went inshore a bit closer just in time to catch what I thought was the five minute gun, and set my watch. The start was way too close in for the conditions, which meant it would be a port hand pin end line up with no possibility of crossing on starboard from the beach out to sea, and there was a fair old tide running with it being on the shove, so I buggered off out to sea for a bit. Knowing the tide would hold them off the line, hopefully enough for me to come in and do a bit of last second arrival, pin end barging, there was no way I was going to take this monstrosity close in and risk a broadside white water escort to the beach.
Checked the watch 1 -10 to go, better start thinking of coming closer, then I remember thinking they're getting a bit previous as the whole lot of them were quite close to the line, I was still a fair distance out to sea at this point. Bang it was the gun, I'd caught the 4 not the 5 whilst I'd been pre occupied with my control issues and hooning about, they were off.
I caught up with the tail enders as they set off, swung round the start buoy and tacked off to get some clear air to see how she'd fair, no more than a couple of minutes passed before I tacked back onto what had previously been my guesstimate of the lay line to the mark they had been laying to weather when I'd been messing about before the start, by the time I clocked it, it was way off downwind, it had been a short fetch rather than a windward beat, I had to foot off, could barely hold the power as we reached back down to where either they'd re-sighted or it the buoy had drifted to and by the time I rounded, once more I was last boat round and nowhere even close, to the fairly short distance to the next mark where the fleet were busy gybing round with the usual chaos. So I set off in pursuit, enjoying the ride and wondering if the pressure from the main was making my hands bleed yet.
It gybed sweet as a nut picking up a few capsized stragglers in so doing, but nothing seriously quick to compare against, just a couple of lasers, the bottom mark quickly followed then it was up the beat for the next leg, still just a tiny short fetch which was really a bit tedious for a race course, typical Hythe contender circuit.

The following pics were from what happened next, which, in brief involved a beat an attempt to put up the kite, the realisation the main had gone out to far and the knot I'd secured the main to the jib sheet had come undone, stupidly hardening up whilst at the same time going amidships to grab the sheet end, with the jib fully cleated for the first time, a text book idiot move that should never be done and the slow realisation that this seemingly un tippable craft could and would in fact go over especially with nothing to climb put the sides with as she slowly reared onto one side...


This shot before the 'start'























The next bit is an approach to and rounding of the bottom mark.








Note the necessity for good teeth control when mark rounding, and the slack forestay and jib.



















Above I'm struggling to cleat off the jib via my bright idea of routing both through an old laser kicker block I used to use for a downhaul control on my race board, not so hot for boat use and caused no end of issues later, it's back to the drawing board on that control.


Back under way again and a reasonable windward performance followed.



Then the silly incident with the main struck and over she went, note the driver standing on the mast trying not to get wet thus ensuring a full turtle.


Which then involved considerable pfaffing about with the Hythe gutless rescue boat, a pathetically heavy affair with a 20hp motor totally unsuitable for the conditions we get at Hythe but you can't tell them.



Including at one point a nice wave surge with the tow line coming right up between the legs of the driver in a full frontal assault on the crown jewels.



None of this of course had gone un noticed by a couple of old boys in their quaint old clinker built sailing bucket, chortling as they sail past at the antics of those young windsurfers, what will they get up to next?



Finally with the line secured to the rack on the far side, with a bit of a following wind and some extra effort the little rescue boat and gallant crew haul it up and over..



Back up, the kite sheet had at some point engaged the prop of the rescue boat, can't say I'd noticed it at the time, but it may have had something to do with its lack of power...



Either way there was a nasty mess of twisted ropes and we still had the rising tide and nose straight into the beach to contend with so, slacking off all the foils, there was no real alternative but to beach and call it a day. Hindsite being an exact science something I probably should have done once it became apparent the rig controls were not functioning as they should, but Hythe beach is something you only really want to leave and return to once in conditions like this, so it was what it was. A baptism of fire which had the control problem to caused the capsize it would have come through with flying colours.















































As it was, a taste of excitement, a rapid learning curve and a fun exercise despite the problems, better that than wandering round a slightly hilly course hitting a deformed white ball with a bent stick..

Credit to Mat Mackenzie for the Pics.



Sunday 8 April 2012



Short bit of video from last weeks 'race' not a lot of wind, and what there was buggered off just as the gun went, had a couple more problems, the spinnaker jammed as the gun went and the jib didn't sheet, had to tie it off with the jib out haul.
 So I've just spent Good Friday and Saturday thoroughly overhauling the jib sheeting, re-positioned the spinnaker pole blocks to ensure the pole goes out as far as is possible and I'll build a longer pole from a carbon mast top I have as soon as I get my hands on a rivet gun.

Have moved to aft sheeting, done away with all the deck clutter, run the cunningham leads out to cleats on the racks, this has two functions one getting them closer to me when I'm out on the rack and helping keep the racks more secure. Have drilled and secured them with pins.

It was raining, cold and dead onshore today so the racing was cancelled not that i was that keen, after the last six weeks of sunny sundays to be confronted with crap visibility, pouring rain, freezing cold and a southerly slop which lifts over the shoreline, the boys launched their new Merlin but they didn't appear to be going anywhere fast, sitting here typing this I now wish I'd gone out, but it would have been crap and those that did didn't stay out long..

So another week and we'll see, it doesn't look too bad in that clip where we had some wind, but the jib sheeting is all screwed, hopefully that's now sorted.