Racing in the Solent

Last time we were in the Solent with Robinetta was for OGA50. OGA55 is a smaller event, based at the Folly Inn on the Medina River rather than in Cowes itself. There were well over a hundred boats registered, which included some open boats as well as yachts. It was only the yachts that set out to race on Saturday.

The race was due to start at 10:30, but we got ready to leave the pontoon at the Folly around 09:00. We had two yachts rafted outside us, who were not planning to race, and yachts rafted ahead of us too, so it was a bit of a wriggle to extract Robinetta, but with a lot of help from other boat owners we got clear, leaving Worm hauled up on the pontoon.

It was an overcast and windy day, but since we were racing we put up the no1 jib as we motored down river towards Cowes. There were a lot of boats milling around on the start line, as there was only a single start time for 6 classes, and over 60 boats on the line.

We did not get an especially good start. Both tide and wind were against us and in the crush of boats trying to tack towards the line we were inevitably sometimes on port and had to give way. However only clear of the line we made straight for the first mark, and made it without too much trouble, but the majority of the sail was spent in frustrating tacking as we tried to get to the windward mark. We could only make progress by short tacking on the northern shore; the one time we decided to go all the way across to the Wight side again we ended up loosing ground.

Elephantboatyard, the top racing mark

The time limit for the race was set at 5 hours after the start, which seems reasonable for a 10.3 nm course. This meant we needed to be back at the Island Yacht Club line by 15:30. There was also a discretionary extra 30 minutes...

We finally got to the upwind, up tide, mark at 15:41....

Cine Mara behind us on the line.

Did we give up? No!

We were determined to finish, and did so at 16:41

Much to our surprise we were not even the last over the line!

We put the engine on and motored back to the Folly, and made it in time to moor up and get the water taxi back to Cowes for the meal and prize giving at the Sugar Store.