Heybridge to West Mersea

This was the day of the Ladies Helm/Skipper and Junior Helm race. We had tried hard to borrow a junior to helm Robinetta for the race, but all the young ones has better (i.e. faster) offers. I never feel right competing in this race as it is meant to encourage people who do not otherwise take the helm. Julian was also feeling slightly grumpy as he had nothing to do but crew,  so I decided that our official "class" was Lady Skipper, and as skipper I would put Julian on the helm. This is not really in the spirit of the race, but it made Julian happier.

The start at Osea Island was a bit confusing as we could not see Emmanuel, the start boat, very well and it was a down wind and down tide race. I got Julian to stay back from the line and we kept having to avoid other boats. Julian was getting grumpy again from my lack of aggressiveness, and we made a poor start, trailing at the back and getting further behind.

The turning mark on the Mersea shore, where the race headed back towards West Mersea, proved elusive. It was one of the West Mersea YC racing marks, and we had the lat/long for it which we had put in the chart plotter. The rest of the fleet seemed to be much further down river than where we knew it should be, then we heard a call on the radio. No one could find it, so the race would now turn at an 8 knot speed limit buoy.

Initially we felt rather grumpy about this, seeing where the rest of the fleet were, and declared that we would turn at the proper buoy. Only when we got to where it should be we could see nothing but an 8 knot speed limit buoy.... This was much closer to the shore than the race mark should have been, but we could see it, and it was in approximately the right position. We used it as our turning mark, and were suddenly back in the race.

The beat back towards the finish line, the Nass beacon bearing 195M, was hard work, but good fun. We rarely push Robinetta, but she had carried full sail on the broad run/run down river, and now we were beating she was healed well over, with the gunnel under. The flat seas meant I felt quite safe with this, and we short tacked up the Mersea flats to avoid the worst of the ebbing tide. We raced against Titch, who went so close to the shore she ran aground, then held our own against Crescent Moon at the line.

We got the sails down just after the beacon and called up the yacht club who were organising moorings for us. They gave us one that was nice and easy to find, and we picked it up without any problems.

We met Ed who was running the race when we were at the yacht club that evening, and confessed to not finding the "right" mark either. He told us it had sounded as though we would lodge a protest when we called him up during the race!