Kipper Sailing

Vessel Name: Kipper of London
18 November 2010
18 November 2010
18 November 2010
18 July 2010 | Lymington
06 July 2010 | On our way bsck to Lymington
05 July 2010 | Finished
05 July 2010 | 5 miles SEof the western entrance to Plymouth Sound
04 July 2010 | 5 miles east of Dartmouth
04 July 2010 | 8 miles ENE of The Bill of Portland
03 July 2010 | 10 miles SE of St Catherines Point
02 July 2010 | 10 miles SW of Beachy Head
01 July 2010 | Anchored 2 miles SE of North Foreland
01 July 2010 | 8 miles SSE of Lowestorft
29 June 2010 | Lowestoft
28 June 2010 | Sailing 3 miles south east of Cromer
28 June 2010 | Becalmed 3 miles east of Cromer
28 June 2010 | 16 miles north of Cromer
27 June 2010 | 20 miles ENE of the entrance to the Humber
27 June 2010 | 12m NE of Flamborough Head
26 June 2010 | 32m east of Blyth
Recent Blog Posts
18 November 2010

White Boats

Sailing schools are commercial enterprises and margins are extremely tight, so they typically buy training boats that provide sufficient accommodation for the maximum of 5 students and one instructor at the lowest possible price. These are usually European (as opposed to British) built and on large production [...]

18 November 2010

Jet Skis

I positively hate jet skis, the people who use them and everything to do with them. As far as I'm concerned they're ridden by men with small willies and without the balls to ride a motorbike. And I mean MEN. When did you ever hear of a woman stupid enough to buy a jet ski? Am I being unfair. No. Do I have an issue with other powered recreational vessels (motor-yachts, ribs, ski boats)? No. The problem with jet-skis is that the idiots who ride them will ride round and round and round what, should have been, a quiet anchorage. This is akin to somebody riding a noisy motorbike round and round a park where everybody else is trying to enjoy a quiet, whatever you do in a park (I wouldn't know). If I could legally buy a bazooka, I'd buy one and blast all the jet skiers to kingdom come.

18 November 2010

Big Boats , Small Boats

Once upon a time, maybe 25+ years ago, a typical first boat was a Mirror Dinghy, then a Wayfarer, then a small Westerly, then a Contessa 32, then a 40 footer. All this over a lifetime of sailing. Experience was gained slowly. Nowadays too many people go out and buy (yes you've guessed it) a shiny new [...]

18 July 2010 | Lymington

Back to Work

Back to the day (and sometimes night) job after the (excitement) of the 2-handed RB&I race. And guess what? I'm enjoying myself more working than I was, supposedly, taking some R&R. It's one Hell of a lot more varied and stimulating.

06 July 2010 | On our way bsck to Lymington

Final thoughts on the race

Now it's all over, I've had time to reflect on the experience and to report on what worked and what didn't.

05 July 2010 | Finished

That's that then.

Finished at 10:13:40.

Heavy Machine Guns

02 July 2010 | 10 miles SW of Beachy Head
John
Shortly after my last blog, the wind filled in from the south, I woke Nasher and, bleary eyed, he hauled the anchor (it was his turn). Whist we were getting it up, Knight's Challenge ghosted by and soon, all four of us back-enders were (enjoying) a close race, which went on all day.

When the tide was with us, we made good progress. When it turned foul, our VMG dropped. Of course the wind was, as has always been the case in this race, coming from precisely where we wanted to go and, with Kipper tacking through more than 90 degrees, this means that at times we see negative VMG, which is very disheartening. (For those who don't sail, negative VMG means that the next waypoint is getting further away.)

For “technical reasons”, which means I can't easily explain why, The Channel tides flood for 7 hours and ebb for 5. Since the flood is against us, this means sailing against the tide for 7 out of every 12 hours. Of course, what goes up and all that, but, when you're beating to windward, westwards down The Channel, that's a lot of hours of not going anywhere much. The English shore is also a series of headlands. Going west from North Foreland, it's first Dover, then Dunganess, Beachy Head, St. Catherines Point, Anvil Point and St Albans Head, Portland and Start Point. The tide runs strongly around these, creating a series of “tidal gates”. You either just make it round on a tide or, pretty much, park up for 6-7 hours, waiting for the tide to set fair. So far we've gone round the first three of these and we've parked at all three. We did however make about 75 miles on the rumb line in the last 24 hours, so we're still on schedule for a Monday finish.

Right now we're 10 miles SW of Beachy Head, making 6kts over the ground on a SW'rly course in WNW 3, with the ebb tide building under us. The latest forecast has the wind W or NW for the next 24hrs, then backing SW F3, occasionally F5-7, so we're probably going to sail all the way over to the French coast before tacking back. ETA Plymouth still Monday. Knight's Challenge and Summer Bird are both around 5 miles south of us and, depending upon what the wind does, probably slightly behind. We don't know where Resolute are but they've been going really well and we suspect they're slightly ahead.

Whilst just round Dunganess, sailing close inshore, in a vain attempt to find a back eddy, we were visited by the range control vessel guarding the Lydd Firing Ranges. At the time we had very little wind and were, almost certainly going to have to, either: enter the range or tack off and go seriously backwards in the adverse tide. I think the chaps in the RCV had had a belly full of RB&I boats over the last week and, whilst they can't actually stop us from entering the range, the heavy machine gun fire was sufficient to have us breath a big sigh of relief when the wind backed and increased slightly, allowing us to tack away without losing too much ground.

Stores are running a bit low. When we victualed up in Lowestoft, we were feeling pretty negative and only provisioned for 2 days on the basis that we'd, almost certainly jack it in and day sail back to Lymington, using the engine to speed us on our way and calling in to Ramsgate and Brighton overnight. Now we're going for it. Our stock of tea is almost gone, I think we've got about 4 tea bags left, and the sweet and biscuit situation is looking pretty dire too. (Annie will think that this is a really good thing). Of course, we've got lots of healthy soup left
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