Race 1

The forecast is always important, so we were awake at 07:10 for the latest weather report. Force 5-6 SW, certainly enough wind for a good race!

We were off the pontoon by 08:05, without taking time for breakfast. It was still over an hour till low water, but even so space was tight to turn Robinetta round and the wind was pushing the bow back up-river. The bows touched the mud. Julian backed her off without problems and got her facing down channel, then I took the helm while he got the sails ready. Every boat we say was reefed, but as we had learned on the East Coast Race, Robinetta needs all the canvas she can muster.

The race started at 09:10, with the smacks going off ten minutes earlier. The committee boat announced radio silence at 08:50, and we did not hear another thing! We saw the smacks start their race at 09:00, but did not know how they knew to go, so had to watch the others in our class to know when we should start. Not the best way to get a head start! It turns out that the start was controlled purely by flags, while we were expecting sound signals.

The course set was the longest on the card. "A", starting up river then turning out to sea again for a long broad reach along the south shore, before turning back for a close reach towards Mersea, then crossing the river again to a buoy by the power station breakwater and another by the entrance to Bradwell Marina, then Thurslet, and the finish at Osea Island pier.

With full main, jib and staysail, Robinetta kept up with the other back markers for most of the race. The reaches were all quite long and we had plenty of time to trim the sails on each one. For once, we got the peak well up and tied the topsail to the boom which meant we could let off the topping lifts and the backstays and get a really good shape on the main.

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Originally uploaded by isobar1968

On the broad reach out of the river we had very strong winds and serious weather helm. It was tiring enough that we took turns at the helm. We haven't worked out yet how to get any more power in to the fore-sails to counter the power in the main and reefing would have slowed us down.

We debated whether to tack at the buoy - the long way round, but as Julian came onto a dead run the main became controllable and we managed a nicely controlled gybe. When we came onto the close reach we had lee helm. It should have been possible to tune this out, but we didn't manage it.

I wanted to tack early and get the most of the tide into the river and some of the bermudans tried this but we decided we would fall too far off the wind and left it a bit. Once we did get into the middle of the river the waves made us very uncomfortable. It was now wind over tide and very lumpy. Robinetta buried her bows in several big swells and that slowed us down. Some of the boats ahead of us headed for the shelter of the shore but without a depth gauge we did not want to risk the shallows. Once past the power station the swell decreased and we tacked steadily up the river to the finish.

We made all the marks, did not run aground, or retire, and we crossed the finish line properly, but when we looked at the results we were down as not having finished, which I DO NOT UNDERSTAND!

Lots of boats did retire due to the wind which gusted 8 occasionally, and the swell that got up once the tide started running strongly against the wind. At least one of the boats that stayed inshore to stay out of the swell ran aground in the shallows and retired.

The most dramatic retirements were also very sad. Cormorant got a very good start, (she won a prize for first boat across the start line) but her race came to an end by the first marker buoy in an incident which also resulted in damage to Charm and a modern bermudan called Bewitched.

It was a sad day for the Old Gaffers with two of its most competitive boats badly damaged, and there was a lot of commiserating done with both skippers during the Sail Locker beer reception and that evening in the Little Ships club at the OGA dinner.