MCC Regatta

Jonathan Taylor

Left the marina under motor and headed down to the strand and moored up to set up for the race. Set off with wind behind 15, gust 25 knots. Followed the course down to what we thought was channel marker 13, which sadly it wasn’t so had to head back to go round losing about 30 minutes in the process. Down wind course included a couple of gybes with the turn around point of stangate spit. Backwards trip involved a lot of tacking back and forth, with a fairly scary moment tracking with the depth sounder showing 8 meters to find we could not turn. Quickly realised we were in fact not at 8 meters and was well and truly aground. Quickly turning the engine on and moving as much weight to the back luckily we floated again. This was even more lucky as we were at this point 4 hours before low water so would have been a very long wait. Lots of tacking back and forth it took us roughly 2 hours before the course was back onto a beam reach allowing some progress to be made. Turn up Gillingham reach again head to wind so tacked back and forth making it through the finish line long after everyone else with a time of 6 hours and 36 minutes. A very enthusiastic session of horns from the race line was a nice finish to our first ever race