wednesday evening race

Mark Rosenthal

Light wsw breeze as we prepared the code 0 and made adjustments to the beefing line for racing. The start was delayed while the 2nd cruise ship, anchored in the New Harbour was cleared for departing. We circled around under the mainsail as we waited for the starting sequence and at the 1 minute signal deployed the code 0 getting FlairIV over the line in 1st place. With all the shipping movements and the light winds on our stern quarter it was challenging trying to keep the heads sail filled but we had a significant lead by the time we cleared Clipera to Starboard and headed upwind to Penrhos. Rounding to port we tacked and deployed the code 0 for the leg to Meath. This leg was very interesting as it was more or less a dead run but complicated by the traffic movements, with the bunkering ship, the pilot boat, the departing Irish ferry and the Stena ferry arriving. However with communications over Ch 14 all went well as we cleared Meath and sailed towards the stern of Stena Estrid then tacked to sail back into the New Harbour with 1 final tack close to the Viking Cruise ship birthed on the Aluminium Jetty. The wind freshened on our last leg to the finish close the the Breakwater end of the line.