Category Archive

Headed out to the start line this morning with the rest of the fleet, all was well.

Hoisted mainsail, setup headsail and A4 in readiness for start, all was well.

5 mins to go manoeuvring up and down under mainsail, switched to pilot to hoist head sail. Pilot read – “Master Absent”… Switched pilot off and back on.. Pilot then intermittently flashed “Master Absent” and its normal display. All not well.

Now sitting in berth having watched fleet head off. Am reading NKE manuals and checking connections between pilot and NKE bus. Cannot reproduce problem currently. All a bit depressing..

With my last solo outing a disaster when I got back I looked for local races to participate in. The Haven Series is a consortium of clubs and enthusiasts on the East Coast and offer both around the cans and passage races. With passage races supporting a two handed class I figured I would enter in their Britannia Race and participate in it solo.

Britannia Race Track

The Britannia Race is 37nm(ish) long and runs up the east coast from Harwich to Lowestoft. This years race attracted 18 entries. Aside from 1 two handed entry and myself every other yacht was fully crewed.

The race started against the tide in very light winds with an AWA (apparent wind angle) of around 30 to 35 degrees. I sat and watched those with large overlapping headsails take off. Eventually the wind freed a little and I put up the code 0 and managed to catch some of them up.

As the wind speed increased the wind headed the fleet and we ended up tacking to make our marks. I pumped in a tank full of water ballast and managed to keep the main fleet insight.

Stats for the race.. Top True Wind Speed – 23.2 knots, Top Boat Speed – 7.44 knots

The Royal Norfolk and Suffolk were our hosts for the evening and did a very good job. They laid on a fantastic spread.

Eclipse - Winner of the 2011 Britannia Race

Congratulations to Des and the crew of Eclipse on their victory

I managed to grab a bit of video..