The Sunsail "Chiller" Regatta: 27 Feb 2010

Friday evening, and ten of us have gathered in Cafe Uno for Pizza, Pasta and Primitivo wine. It's going to be a cold February night, and we're sleeping in unheated 37ft yachts..... and we're wondering why the other five of our number decided to sleep in warm beds and come down to meet us in the morning.

Still, apart from the condensation on the outside of the sleeping bags things were not too bad, and Saturday dawned bright, albeit with some very threatening clouds and winds gusting to 30 knots.

The remainder of our crews arrived on time, the bacon butties were claimed from the Yacht Club and the skippers got briefed. We had two LBS boats - a strong crew with Klaus, aiming for honours and a relatively inexperienced crew with Rob aiming to be "not last".

LBS "Red" crew:

Klaus Rasmussen
Lee Bonham
Mark Buckle
Kath O'Sullivan
Fiona Cotterill
Miranda Hall
Julian Fox

LBS "Blue" crew:

Rob Cotterill
Praveen Abraham
Anselm Foxell
Sebastien Rodrigo
Lesley Gavin
Juan Camilo Saldarriaga
Joel Shinners

Major forfaits are due from Ed, who somehow couldn't get himslef out of his warm London bed to make if down to Port Solent.

With a very strong Spring tide a Southerly wind and no racing buoys, the committee boat took a long time finding somewhere to lay a starting line so that we could manage to race. Eventually the race began, and Rob found himself a long way back with 20 seconds to go before the start, and - worse- found Klaus just ahead of him, out of the running.

Klaus and crew tacked away onto Port straight away, and managed to claw their way back through the fleet. Rob and crew arrived at the top mark in ninth (out of 10), pulled back ground poling out the genoa on the down-wind, but not quite getting enough back to be able to overtake, and held that place to the end of the race.

Lesley and Rob shared the helming duties in race 1, and Joel had his first go at the front of the boat. Race two saw Joel on the helm for the start, and it was set to be a good one...too good. Our noses were poked over the line with 10 seconds to go, we had at least four others outside us who were also infringing, but were slapped with individual recalls rather than the general one that we were hoping for. We ducked back across the line and started back in the fleet.

It was a similar race to the last one, except the wind was dropping throughout. This time we shook out the reef for the downwind, and probably should have risked a kite on the second downwind leg, except for the inexperience of the crew and the occasional 25kt gusts that hit us.. In the end it was the same story as race 1: 9th, and challenging the two boats in 7th & 8th all the way. Overall we came in 8th equal, as the boats around us did not manage our consistency.

Juan managed to join us on deck for practice and a quick bite to eat before the second race, but made most of his contribution to the result asleep in the port cabin. Apparantly it had been a very good Friday night.

Team "Red" brought in a 4th and a 5th, to be 4th overall with stories of sprung spinnaker shackles, lost spinnaker bags and tacks that weren't tacks during the pre- start.

Still, a great day on the water. Sunshine on the Solent while London endured a downpour.

Looking forward to sailing with the rest of you!