(c) Trevor Drew – Class 6 get underway
Saturday saw 3 Impalas out for the first JOG race of the year – Cowes to the Nab Tower and back. Two Frank’s Olly Love writes: ‘The race started very very badly for us on the motor over when we had the bacon sandwiches in the oven but forgot to get gas so had to eat them cold…
‘Our start was a bit interesting: with the tide flowing and 5-8 knots of wind we did not want to be too close, and so we were a little late, giving the jump to Magic. With some people electing for kite on the first leg and a host of Code 0’s being hoisted we chose to go for the light No.1 and trim the backside out of the sails, with the whole crew moving weight and tweaking everything in sight we sailed FRANK like a dinghy to catch up to Magic.
‘We sat looking at her stern for 8 miles, inching closer then losing the gains. At the forts the breeze had freshened to 15 knots so the heavy no1 came out and the crew peeled loosing us some ground but saving the light no1. We chose to play the tidal shift further towards the nab and got it spot on… And watched a certain French female helm blowing out their Genoa.
‘Magic decided to head for Brighton and Cheeky Monkey elected to come with us. So it was a drag race to the Nab with the crew hiking hard. We arrived at the Nab ahead and decided to hoist.
‘This is where it went a bit wrong! As our mast woman hoisted she decided to throw herself over the guardrails and into the Solent. With other boats down the back of our necks we held course and two of the biggest crew dragged her out of the water and set the kite. (she was ok and ended up wearing most of the crews kit). The reach back was a bit of kite up and down but we arrived at the forts at the same time as Magic (one design at its best) they stalled in the lee of the fort and we managed to coast around. There was a lot of shouting to larger boats about depth on the following leg with our depth reading between 0.1 and 0.2 for about 20 mins we got out of the tide and made gains with the no1 up.
There was a slight navigational error at Snowden (I missed it and had to gybe round forgetting to tell the crew what we were doing.) After a tense 45 seconds at the finish it was a close finish between the Impalas and Frank 7th overall by 7 seconds!
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