Thornbury files

[phil_kirk]

To show that we are not resting on our laurels we took part in thornbury's Lydney litre race.

Race up to Lydney on the west bank of the severn have a drink in the bar and race back again. Race time covers the drinking bit too.

It was a 9 mile beat up to Lydney which could have been accomplished with two tacks had it not been for some windshifts.  We also had to stear round sizable logs and even saw a whole tree drifting on the tide.  The river narrows at Lydney and the tide accelerates to 5-6 knots so getting in to Lydney in a dying wind was a bit tricky. 

The bar was closed!

We then had to wait for the tide to slacken before we headed back.  This was mostly a drift until near the end when a 20knot SW'ly filled in for the final leg, a 2 sail reach back to the club. 

[roland_trim]

Sharpness Race
Another fine long distance race at TSC. The race is to the site of a wreck 9 miles upstream of the club and back. Presumably in memory of the mistake made by the eroneous captain, participants must choose their own start time and ensure they are around the wreck before 10 minutes after high tide.

Marmite, E-Numbers and Evo lined up for what started as a drift and ended with a twin wire bounce home.

The story from Evo was that the helm is now very unfit and that the new T-foil does not fit the old "hold down" sytem. A stop to put the T-foil back in the water and ensure it stayed there meant we missed the window for the return leg.  The new Centre board and T-Foil both worked very nicely. Many thanks to Tim U. for stepping in and nursing some fitness back.

E-Numbers waited and started later than everyone else and "got lucky" with the wind filling in and jetting her up to the fleet. Although you could argue that this was great judgement as Phil has won this race before. I think Phil was the eventual winner and Marmite clocked 3rd.

[phil_kirk]

It is a fine race and great to have the added tactic of choosing your start time to make the best of the tide and wind. 

We started late because when we launched we could see wind filling in from down river. We had also estimated that 10am  was a good time to start to get to the turning point just before the time limit.  So we stuck to our start time the wind did fill in slowly and helped us to chase down those who had started earlier.  By the first mark we were in contention and just had to keep in touch with the other faster boats.

Marmite made this quite difficult with their flat kite and disappeared up river on the tight reach.  We dropped our kite twice in the puffs and headed up to give ourselves a better angle for the next hoist. We made sure that we were up tide of the turning mark so that if the wind died or the tide turned earlier than expected we had the shortest distance to sail on a good wind angle.  We made the turning mark with 2 minutes to go (as last year).  We didn't go as close in shore as we should have and missed the fastest turned tide.  This let some of the others pull ahead.  The wind then filled in with a rain shower and we were soon twinning upwind and going as fast as E-Numbers has possibly ever been.  This did allow us to close the gap a bit and set us up for the final two sail reach to the finish. Some of the boats stayed on the wind and did not use the tide for the first half of the leg.  having reached the whole leg we were able to close the gap some more finishing about 30 seconds behind Marmite. Overal time of about 2 hours sailing.

It was good to have 3 cherubs on the startline for this club race, a race in my view that would be a great open event.

[phil_kirk]

Where is the wind? The last two ocassions I have been to Thornbury to get some practice for the inlands there has been no wind.  Well a small puff does occasionally appear but a lot of time is spent wobbling around going quite slowly.  Then on the Sundays when I sail a different boat there is a lovely breeze.

Sod's law means that the inlands is almost definitely going to be a windy event (at least on the Saturday anyway).

[roland_trim]

May be the key is to just sail the Cherub there and do more of it ;-)

I sympathise, there is nothing worse than being faced with perfect conditions and not having the right boat under you.

[TSC]

Yep you definitely chose the wrong day Phil. On Sunday we had a nice F3. The only problem was the fog which rolled in on the 3rd lap of the first race, and created total whiteout conditions. The race officer couldn't even see boats crossing the other end of the start finish line!!! It certainly made it interesting.

As a result the 2nd race was abandoned

Re-run of the Around the Lights race will be on Nov. 4th at 9:00am

[phil_kirk]

Yippee!

This Sunday was already committed.  I was sailing in the civil service team racing team against the ARMY Navy and Airforce for the annual victory trophy. 

So for the first time in 30 years we won the event.  We only lost one race of the 9 races we sailed and that was due to a penalty on the finish line which resulted in out first boat becoming the 6th boat.

We had 3 very experienced team racing helms (I crewed) Sam and Guy Brearey and Ellen Milner.

I have helmed in the previous 2 ocasions that I have taken part in and the team has been made up of those who were available.  This year we had to sellect a team due to the additional interest.

I'm sorry Paul, but it beat sailing at Thornbury on this ocassion.

[BenR]

Paul C has very sneakily put an AWESOME video of Marmite absolutely rocking it at Thornbury on the website without telling anyone.

Check it out here: http://www.uk-cherub.org/doku.php/videos

for full HD view it on youtube.

[simon_jones]

Spectacular video guys one for the dinghy show

[Torchy]

In HD you can see the smiles on their faces....nice one guys