Thursday 7 September 2017

Buffy: Wednesday evening light


Mistakenly thought yesterday evening was the last of the Wednesday evening races on the lake at Frampton. Delighted to discover on arriving at the Club that I'd muddled my dates and we've got one more race next Wednesday before we totally lose the light in the evenings and racing reverts to Sundays only for the rest of the year.

Hels sailed with me again; her second race of the year, so we could no longer excuse ourselves by claiming to be out of practice.

So it was probably just as well we won.

It was a gorgeous evening on the water; shorts and t-shirt sailing, of which I suspect there's not a lot left to be had this year. Wind was light and shifty, but constant enough in pressure to keep you moving, and moving well as long as you paid appropriate attention to the lifts and headers and keeping clean air downwind. Which was relatively simple for us, as we broke away from the pack early, first around the windward mark, then didn't really look back.


One last race next week and Hels has already said she'll be available (oh the sweet intoxication of a win?). I'm guessing she won't have looked at the forecast. Next Wednesday is still a long way out, but Windfinder is currently teasing me with the promise of gusts upto 31 knots.


Meanwhile, Dad and I have the Holms Race this coming Saturday. The forecast earlier in the week was looking like it was going to blow us out. A couple of years ago we might have risked a F5 gusting 7, but we've bothered the lifeboats too much already this year to take chances and have become very aware of how easy it is to break stuff. But Windguru is now predicting north westerly at a far more moderate 15 to 20 knots. That's still a thrash for our old boat and her old crew, but doable. Conversely, the forecast for Sunday suggests 23 gusting 35 from the west south west. If it does that, we're staying put in Portishead another week and taking Calstar back home to Penarth the following weekend.

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