Monday 2nd November 2009

We arrived in La Harve at 0630 on Friday morning at day break , We had a good trip over, mainly up wind with an average wind speed of about 14 knots and managed to get everything on our list ticked off and had no dramas .

We were the 5th boat to arrive but by the end of the day all fourteen Open 60’s were tied up in the race village and the village was officially opened.
It’s a great atmosphere here at the moment and it’s great to see all the boats here all in such good shape, everyone seems to be quite chilled with no one running around doing any major last minute changes.

This weekend was our prologue race.
The race organisers had decided that instead of us racing in the open 60’s for the prologue we would race two up in 7.5m Keel boats inside the harbour.
This made a great arena for the spectators and great fun for us.
The open 60’s and trimaran skippers were split into three groups with six teams in each group.
The plan was that each group would do one race on Saturday and one race on Sunday morning and then the winner of each group will race on Sunday afternoon to decide the overall winner.
We were grouped with
Urgence climatique
BT
Safran
Akena
Group Bell.

We had a great race on Saturday and managed to pull out a second in what we felt was a difficult group. The racing was close and we only just managed to keep hold of second from Safran and BT by a mere boat length due to a good tactical call on the final downwind leg and a good rounding of the mark.

We both had great fun and were well pumped up for Sunday.

Sunday turned out to be a different day, the wind was more than double that of Saturday with gusts over 25 knots which makes keeping these boats that are usually sailed by four very difficult to keep upright. Never the less the race organisers were determined to send us out and we were more than game for what looked like could be good fun.
We jumped into the boat pulled the jib out and then bang we were blown over straight away, so this really was going to be fun! We came back up right and then sailed down towards the start.
We had a good start and there wasn’t much between the front four boats, but as we were sailing towards were the mark that we had to go round, Alex noticed that it was no longer there.
It had detached its self from the sea bed and was being blown past us with pace, everyone else also realised and we all started to head towards the drifting buoy, this resulted in a big pile up witch we managed to bail out of un-scathed. The race then got called short and with the breeze still building the fleet were unable to continue.

All in all it has been a good fun weekend.

Sco

Thursday 29 October 2009

Our final sail

At 0900 tomorrow, Alex and myself will leave our home port of Gosport and head towards the French port of La Havre for the start of the Transat Jacques Vabre - we will also have the company of a French journalist and a photographer.
We have all are spares, sails, food and clothes for the race stowed onboard and the boat is now set up in full race mode. This will be the last opportunity that we will get to sail the boat before the start. We have compiled a list of things that we need to check and manoeuvres that we need to practice before we arrive so it will be busy...

A year has passed but the collision with the French fishing boat out side of the harbour for the start of the Vendee globe is still fresh in our minds and think it will be for a long time. Hence for that reason we both decided that an arrival in daylight would reduce any bad luck .

For me now it’s time to pack my bags and lock up my house, as long as all goes well I won’t be back here until the middle of December.
Thinking about it that means that Alex and myself will spend every day for the next six weeks together, I am sure that this will bring testing and happy times for both of us , but that’s all part of offshore racing.

Ross