Super Saturday

According to the 1937 Yachting Monthly, Robinetta's waterline length is 18'4". But the same article puts her draught at 3'8" and we know its 4'6" so she sits lower in the water than she was meant to.

Little did we know that the little boats would be divided into two sub-classes on waterline length and that boats under 20' would start 20 minutes after those over. 

We measured our LWL and it came out over. We wanted that 20 minutes to give us a better chance of completing in the time limit and sailing with the other boats, rather than behind them. 

Luckily we were allowed to change to our actual class instead of our theoretical class. Many thanks to the organisers.

Getting out of the marina took a little thought as neither of the boats in front or behind us were going to move. We waited until the other boats who were going had made space and then, with a little help we let the wind push her out and I used the engine to wiggle the stern into the gap left by Plum and we then motored out easily.

Stooging around before the start was sometimes tricky as the big boats like Pioneer need lots of room to turn. We must have missed the radio notification of the course but I managed to hail Ben Collins boat Betty 2 and find out the course was J. I programmed it as a route in the gps. 

 We got a really good start and a good line for the first mark. Alison was helm and sail trim and I was skipper and navigation. It felt great. Alison said it was perfectly balanced with no. 1 jib, staysail and full main. The wind was strong but Ok and the waves were making it bouncy but not knocking us back.

Then I noticed the gaff saddle had slipped around to port. We were on port tack so that was bad news. The peak sagged a little and I pulled up on the hardener. The saddle swung round further. I tried tensioning the luff with the reefing roller and it helped a bit but the gaff sagged again. Every time I looked up, the peak was more saggy than before. Then I noticed the gaff was bending outwards and downwards. It looked about to snap. 

I had three choices, carry on, retire, or reef and carry on. We need to sail home next week so breaking the gaff was not attractive. We had started, so we had upped the numbers participating. We wouldn't win anything so retiring seemed sensible.

We got the sails down, radioed in and headed for the marina. We heard lots of other boats retiring as we went.