Tuesday, 5 June 2007
Eddystone Race Blog
As the sunset on Thursday evening, the Sailing Logic Team and their Fastnet teams were still beavering away to get the boats in top racing condition for the coming weekend. It looked set to be an interesting race with generally light winds forecast for the weekend, meaning that the tactics would play a very important part.
The teams left Southampton to head down to the start line off Cowes. The race began with a very light South Westerly Breeze and an interesting decision whether to choose to tack down the island shore, with the last of the favourable tide, or the mainland shore, where the wind would be more likely to be increase first. Most of the Sailing Logic Teams chose the latter option. Only Puma and Jaguar chose to stay on the island side and after a tussle with each other all the way out of the Solent, Jags was last boat out.
The next tactical decision was to stay inshore or head offshore. Jaguar Logic took the decision to head out early on which proved to be a good decision and they held their lead over the other Reflexes round Eddystone, with Bongani, Lion and Puma hot on their heels.
On the way back Puma clawed their way back overtaking Lion and Bongani and Philippe was working his crew hard with sail changes, to gain every last bit of speed possible as they tried to catch up with Jaguar too, eventually gaining back over twelve miles on them.
The last of the wind petered out almost everywhere and on the turn of the tide much of the fleet chose to anchor, as they realised how quickly they would they would drift backwards!!
With the end in sight but so little wind, the frustrated crews all put in a fantastic effort to keep the boats going, realising the importance of weight distribution and moving slowly and gently round the yacht.
The last few miles were slow going for all the fleet but eventually Jaguar Logic was the first Reflex to cross the line and took 4th place in IRC 1. Puma, Lion and Sidney were not far behind (7th, 12th and 15th respectively) and Bongani took 9th in IRC 2.
It was a very interesting race but a complete change for all the teams from the training weekend with lots of wind, but everyone again went away with lots more to think about, and the difference that such light wind conditions make. Congratulation to everyone for a superb effort all round. There were certainly lots of exhausted faces on Sunday!!
We are looking forward to the next race, the Morgan’s Cup, on Friday 15th June.
As the sunset on Thursday evening, the Sailing Logic Team and their Fastnet teams were still beavering away to get the boats in top racing condition for the coming weekend. It looked set to be an interesting race with generally light winds forecast for the weekend, meaning that the tactics would play a very important part.
The teams left Southampton to head down to the start line off Cowes. The race began with a very light South Westerly Breeze and an interesting decision whether to choose to tack down the island shore, with the last of the favourable tide, or the mainland shore, where the wind would be more likely to be increase first. Most of the Sailing Logic Teams chose the latter option. Only Puma and Jaguar chose to stay on the island side and after a tussle with each other all the way out of the Solent, Jags was last boat out.
The next tactical decision was to stay inshore or head offshore. Jaguar Logic took the decision to head out early on which proved to be a good decision and they held their lead over the other Reflexes round Eddystone, with Bongani, Lion and Puma hot on their heels.
On the way back Puma clawed their way back overtaking Lion and Bongani and Philippe was working his crew hard with sail changes, to gain every last bit of speed possible as they tried to catch up with Jaguar too, eventually gaining back over twelve miles on them.
The last of the wind petered out almost everywhere and on the turn of the tide much of the fleet chose to anchor, as they realised how quickly they would they would drift backwards!!
With the end in sight but so little wind, the frustrated crews all put in a fantastic effort to keep the boats going, realising the importance of weight distribution and moving slowly and gently round the yacht.
The last few miles were slow going for all the fleet but eventually Jaguar Logic was the first Reflex to cross the line and took 4th place in IRC 1. Puma, Lion and Sidney were not far behind (7th, 12th and 15th respectively) and Bongani took 9th in IRC 2.
It was a very interesting race but a complete change for all the teams from the training weekend with lots of wind, but everyone again went away with lots more to think about, and the difference that such light wind conditions make. Congratulation to everyone for a superb effort all round. There were certainly lots of exhausted faces on Sunday!!
We are looking forward to the next race, the Morgan’s Cup, on Friday 15th June.
posted by Sailing Logic at 3:07 PM
