Last Evening Race
Published 10:50 on 18 Sep 2025
Four boats took part in the rescheduled cruiser race A5 on a pleasant Friday evening, 12th September. Fortunately, the rain showers had stopped.
Exisle, Pegasus II and Seeaway all started roughly together, with Innisfallen bringing up the rear. Exisle was at the windward end of the line, which proved advantageous, permitting Andy to reach Mark D first, but with Keith close behind. The small change in bearing towards the next mark (M) seemed to favour Seeaway and they passed to windward of Exisle, just reaching the mark first.
Turning to windward, Exisle stayed on port tack, hardening up to leeward of Seeaway but in clear air. Andy judged that the making-tack for mark-C was starboard so he bore away and tacked under Seeaway's stern. Keith was thinking similarly and tacked Seeaway also. Meanwhile Alastair, a little behind, decided to tack Pegasus II immediately on rounding M.
On the beat inshore Seeaway demonstrated its ability to point much better to windward than the Westerlys. However, Exisle kept up a good speed, ending up nominally ahead but well down to leeward. Pegasus II tacked on to port half way, which proved unfortunate as the wind turned out to be stronger inshore. Andy kept going in, on the basis that if the wind backed, as forecast, it would be advantageous (it did a little, but nothing dramatic.) He tacked Exisle close to the lay-line for C, while Seeaway went about a bit earlier.
At C, Exisle rounded clear ahead and set off on the broad reach to mark Z. However, Seeaway continued to edge closer as after Z, as course was set for the finish line. By now the wind had veered nearly westerly so we could goosewing. Andy made the mistake of trying to rig the pole slightly tricky single-handed. Somehow, he managed to attach it to the wrong sheet! (He also just missed going the wrong side of mark-Y.) Consequently, during the chaos, Seeaway closed right up crossing the line only three seconds behind Exisle with Pegasus II coming in third, and Innisfallen retiring. These finishing positions remained unchanged once handicaps had been applied. All good fun!