Crowded Start Lines!

Great days sailing - in fact a great weekend overall - and we sailed well enough to be second placed J109 from the 25 J109 entries.

It gave us 4th place in our Division, a 16th place in the IRC fleet of 150+ boats, and a 52nd overall from all IRC entrants. Not bad placing in a fleet of over 1500 competitive boats, eh? We were all feeling pretty chuffed with our efforts - and we almost got to be 1st 109. Almost.

With our four Norwegian guests on board Chris G and I sailed over Friday afternoon under spinnaker, giving them the chance to get familiar with Jumbucks handling. They are all good sailors, and once Rob and Chris A arrived Friday evening, our team was up to numbers.

Fridays night out was a pretty liquid affair, but we hit the sack quite early so as not too be too wrecked for the next days racing.

Up bright and early Saturday, away from the dock by 0600 with bacon bagettes hanging from our mouths, we stooged around a pretty crowded pre start area watching the fleets that started before us. With a tiny bit of easterly tide, the club end was well favoured by everyone.

We got away at 0740 in good weather beating into a 15 knot westerly. Great start for us - all rather crowded as you can see above (we were in there somewhere) - but we ducked and dived close in by the island shore and worked our way into clear air reasonably quickly, and then settled back to working our way down the Solent.

Interesting how quickly we all caught up with the previously started fleet of bigger boats (fading tide helped), but by the time we were half way to the Needles, the racetrack was packed. Regretfully on our way west, we got the course side wrong, tending from halfway to stay mainland side as we believed the westerly winds were fresher there. But got buggered properly when the wind swung to the south west before the forecast time. It meant all the boats who we had overtaken or left behind, but that which stayed island side, got the lifting advantage over the others like us, who were further north.

Whipped through past Hurst Castle with 2/3 knots of helpful tide, and slid in very close to round the Needles, where we quickly popped the spinnaker and then hoisted the new staysail. I believe we were had fallen back to maybe halfway down the J109 pack at the Needles, but as we surfed off towards St Catherine's at the bottom of the island running before 20/25 knot winds, Jumbuck lifted her skirts and slowly one by one, we reeled them all back in.

Gybing many times once we'd shaved St Catherine's, to stay close inshore and avoid the west flowing tide, saw us overtake a few more until finally we got to be second placed 109 as we passed Benbridge Ledge Buoy and began the reach back up the east side of the island and then turn to finally beat up to the finish.

Didn't quite manage to hold off that last 109 - Jacobi - that we'd overtaken at Benbridge, so crossed the finish line as the third 109. But the lead 109 was using much bigger sails than we carried, and her handicap moved her to the third placed 109, and us up to 2nd.

Just think, if we'd managed to keep Jacobi behind us - we would almost certainly have got top spot............

But we were all pretty pleased, Saturday nights party was good. Little more liquid than Fridays - and I believe (but don't know for sure) that Chris and I got back to the boat around midnight. Nice, nice, nice. I love this stuff.

Thanks to Rob, Chris A, Chris G, Hallstein, Kjertil, Arne and Petter for a super weekends sailing. Could not have been better - unless of course - we'd actually got that 1st place!!