Hamble Winter Series - week 6

November 19-20

A bit of ice skating anyone? Frost met the Corinthian crews this past weekend. The morning routine incorporated brushing ice off the decks and pouring buckets of sea water on the decks to keep them from frosting back up.

Yes, it was cold!! I know you are thinking, 'They must be mad!!' Perhaps we are, but when the air is cold and crisp, the sun is shining, and the mist is rising off the warmer water, it is fantastic.

All the crews were out again, High Tension (Geraldine Fabre), Doris J (Paul Davies), Me Julie (Ian Stowe) and X-perience (David Harrison).

This weekend was clearly about proper kit! As the temperatures hovered below 0ºC at night, and not much warmer during the day, it was essential to have the right gear, including oilies!! One LCSC crew member, who shall go nameless, managed to leave their oiles at home. Not a good weekend for that faux pas.

Saturday saw the J109's heading out with Barry Dunning and Peter Hopps. Me Julie had their own professional skipper on board as well. Peter spent Saturday morning with Doris J and by the time he departed, they all knew a bit if not a lot more. They even managed to return to Hamble for the second half of rugby!

Me Julie was short handed this week with only 6 on board. Their training Saturday began with Barry on board in the morning, Peter in the afternoon and Ian all day, of course. Reports have it that by the time the other boats were heading back to watch rugby, spirits on board were a bit low. The Me Julie crew experienced some difficulties after being taught three different methods of doing the same job. Not all kite work went as designed. So, they opted therefore to stay out a bit longer and practice. Wasn't a popular choice at the time, but did it sure paid off on race day.

X-perience didn't exactly rise to the hard core training regime either. After nipping out for one tack, one mark rounding and one gybe, we headed back to Hamble to pick up one remaining crew member. We then scooted over to Cowes for a bit of a shop, only to discover that SLAM is no longer there. (What will we wear now?). The plan had then been to head up to the Foley Inn for rugby, but we decided best to do some practice. So, we did our tacking every minute, and gybe, gybe, gybe with the kite. We missed the rugby, but it was worth the practice time. The sunset was stunning over the Solent as we motored back in.

High Tension, having no trainer on board, had the crew swapping roles, improving on communication, boat trimming, helming and assessment of time and distance to buoy roundings (with and without spinnaker). All of that with music in the back ground, thanks to Nick. They witnessed X-perience heading into Cowes and our bit of shopping, and they turn headed back for rugby. Saturday was a rather Corinthian and entertaining training day!

Saturday evening saw a few LCSC crews eating in town, and not on board! And as usual, some paid a heavy price for watching rugby over a few beers all afternoon. But, alas Sunday morning did arrive with cold, frost and no wind. Another race day loomed ahead with us wondering whether we would race or not.

Race we did, after a slight postponement. Winds were decent to start, but as the race progressed they became lighter and lighter. Crews spent most time to leeward during this race.

X-perience changed mains twice while en route to the starting area. Dacron or repaired racing main, that was the question. Racing main, right. Change the sail, hoist, top batton not right, lower, fix batton, hoist, still not right. Dacron main it is. Change it back and we are sorted. Certainly kept the crew warm. We had a great start and first two legs. Then we got pushed outside and lost a bit of momentum. We got caught in the dying winds as we headed towards the last mark before the finish, and watched the boats ahead just get around before the wind completely disappeared. But, all in all we had a decent race. No problems, nothing broken, which after last week was a great result.

After having managed to be in the top half of the fleet, catching the winds where they could, High Tension also managed to get caught up in the no wind scenario. We watched them drifting backwards with the tide towards Cowes. We all felt for them as one knows how frustrating it is when there is 0 knots of wind, tide against you and there is absolutely nothing you can do. They placed 16th (on corrected time) this week.

Doris J had a good start and stayed close to High Tension around the first mark. It was noted then that strategies changed across the boats as each took different avenues to handle the light winds, and tides. Doris J's course paid off as they finished 14th this week. Well done.

And lastly, Me Julie. What an amazing performance this crew turned in. As stated, the added training on Saturday wasn't much appreciated at the time but … Seems that Ian had the crew moving (or better yet, not moving) around the boat keeping complete focus on weight distribution. The trimmers we constantly being called on to trim to the slightest of puffs. Crew were multi-tasking with nav and mast combined, and pit and trimming combined. All their efforts clearly paid off. They finished in 8th, the best club boat result to date. A job very well done by the 'novice' boat. The crew certainly was all smiles on Sunday afternoon.

So, yet again another weekend of racing has come and gone. I leave you with a quote from Paul Davies, skipper of Doris J, 'This was my first weekend on the LCSC HWS campaign and in my opinion such good performance, building breadth and resilience across the entire squad, is the product of the quality of the training programme.'

With that, a huge 'Thank you' to Mike Ridley,Geraldine Fabre and Peter Hopps who have spent their time and energy putting this campaign and programme together, all while spreading their enthusiasm for sailing to a few more!!

Penny Pariso (on behalf of all the Winter Series crews)

Copyright © London Corinthian Sailing Club, 2005