Triangle Race Qualifier

Jan and I had the week off last week, our plan was to do some cruising, fit in a Triangle race qualifier and end up at the end of the week in Burnham-on-Crouch to race in an EAORA race named the Houghton cup.

We set off on the morning of Sunday the 23rd of August aiming to get our qualification done. Poor weather and lack of a cat sitter meant our trip would start and finish and our home port of Levington. When out of the river and in Dovercourt bay we logged our intentions with Thames Coast Guard and sped towards Nord Hinder.
The tide was fairly strong and constantly lifted us North. Not a problem, it didn’t really matter where we ended up, what was important was the distance that we covered.

It had been fairly windy and we had been getting true wind speeds between 20 and 25 knots. Our sail plan was 1 reef in the mainsail and a number 3. Ninjod liked the sail plan and the weather, our speed rarely dropped below 7 knots and we had peaks above 10 knots.

We reached our turning point in the middle of the North sea just before sunset, turned and headed for home. During the final throws of our outbound leg we had shaken the reef out as the true wind speed dropped to 12 knots.
The night was great although not without problems. The 1st came shortly after Jan had gone down to sleep. It was dark and I was at the helm when a searchlight was shone at the boat. It was all very alarming, we were not in any TSS or lane. I called for a torch and we shone a light back. We are still not sure what the ship in question was doing, we were transmitting AIS, had our mast head navigation lights on and were painting a radar reflection the size of a supertanker thanks to SeaMe. As fast as the ship had arrived he changed course and vanished.
Our 2nd problem came as the wind built. The wind built and the true wind speed went up to between 20 to 25 knots. Ninjod’s speed sat between 9 and 10 knots. She felt out of balance, it was reefing time. As the reef line was wound on the btt of plastic in self tailing winches that stops the rope going through on itself popped and the worst happened. Our reef line, partly on had wrapped itself around itself and the winch a few times. After a quick chat it was decided that getting the reef on was more important than freeing the winch so we wound on a bit more.
By 0400 in the morning on Monday the 24th we were making our way up the river towards our berth. We called Thames Coast Guard at the request and let them know we were back. We had been sailing for 20 hours, clocked up over 140 nm and maintained an average boat speed of over 7 knots constantly.