alice s

16-25knts tide pushing us west - back towards hamble, over startline

18 knots white sails only novice crew

11-23 knots

With a perfect wavetrain forecast of 4-6 knots off the line at Cowes, it was a really disappointingly slow start for us at the RORC Cherbourg race on friday. Facing engine issues at the start that we soon realised were the result of a prop wrap at T-4 minutes to go, we reluctantly headed into Cowes to fix the issue. Equipped with a mask and diving torch from the Spanish galleon moored next to us on trinity landing, we dived down to fix the issue. Still keen to complete our first channel crossing (double-handed) despite watching the fleet head off, we crossed the line at [insert time]. By this point, the breeze at Snowdon had dropped to 2 knots so while the tide helped us close the gap in the shutdown off Bembridge, progress past no-man’s fort was undeniably difficult. As the northerly wind filled back in with us still 6NM from the back of the pack we decided to sail our own race. With the breeze filling in steadily to build up to a consistent 14 knots in the early hours of the morning, we dropped to reef the main and hoisted again to fly the kite up to T-15NM from cherbourg when after a long broach we got it down to fly the j2 along the rhumb line into the harbour. We ultimately finished in 61st/68th with an elapsed time of 18 hours and 16:14 hours on corrected time. We’d like to extend our gratitude to Gavin for the use of Wavetrain. Despite our result, we learnt a great deal and were very fortunate to refine our skills double-handed.