RAE 2026-08-23

Mark Rosenthal

As arranged all the yachts split away from St George's Pier at 06:15 to go through the Swellies at Slack Water. In perfectly flat conditions we all motored through the Swellies and as the wind didn’t fill in as hoped we continued to motor towards Caernafon Bar C1 buoy. At 09:53:00 the wind had reached approximately 4kt from the NNE while our SOG was 3.0kt which allowed us to start the race. The winds continued to be light variable but we hugged the coastline to gain benefit from the eddies in the bays as the ebb tide continued to push the other yachts backwards as they had stayed out to the West. The winds picked up several times as we continued to concentrate on maximising our VMG to the next waypoint; finally filling in as we passed Aberfraw and from here on we had nice consistent winds but with the wind with tide both against us we made 31 tacks and 1 gybe on Sunday! As we approached South Stack we put in a couple of tacks to get closer into Abraham’s Bosom with Twr Helen glowing white in the bright sunshine. Conditions around the stack got a bit choppy with wind against tide but by no means the worst! We arrived at the finish at 15:40:40, back to the mooring and a clear up before a sit down and a pannad before catching the launch to go ashore.