First Wednesday Evening Race 2025

Mark Rosenthal

Following on from a busy day including driving to Pwllheli and back to get the replacement battens I didn’t arrive early enough and although the crew were on board and making preparations as the launch was busy with a lot of demands from the Squibs and other cruisers I was even later getting to the boat. As a consequence we were late getting off the mooring after I had attempted to fit one of the new long battens. The batten, after all that, was too short, so we set off with 2 battens still missing from the main and one in the jib. We checked in with Dawn, thank you for running the racing, to say we were entering the race and then followed the 2 other yachts who were out crossing the start line as we finally got the jib setting, Winds light NE. Of course in the rush to set off I forgot to set SailTies to record for the start! Course 1 had been selected and so we sailed towards the aluminium jetty gradually catching the other boats then tacked as soon as it was feasible to round the end of the breakwater and take advantage of the tide on our way to Meath, the first mark of the course. WIth our early tack we were now ahead of the other two boats as the crew struggled to get the code 0 rigged for the reech down to Penrhos. We intercepted a call on the radio from Hellhound saying that Penrhos mark, the second mark of the course, may not have been put in place yet. We reported that we had the coords on the chart plotter and would use this as the mark before returning the waypoint 3, Clipera. There was some activity in and around the Ferry Terminal with the fuel tanker talking on Ch 14 and as we tacked away from where Penrhos should have been, towards Clipera we received a warning hoot from the fuel tanker and immediately tacked again to show our intentions. By now the other two boats had retired but we carried on until we almost reached Clipera but with the crew getting cold and the wind dying away we also retired and headed back to the moorings. Back on shore we all met up in the clubhouse for a drink and dinner.