June 25th gave rise to another fantastic round the island race for butterfly, Kenny, Simon and Dan were joined by eight guests, which we must say were a really good crowd and a great time was had by all. The strong winds provided perfect sailing conditions for butterfly and we ended up in 325th position out of the 1900 yachts that entered the race (albeit a fair amount of these pulling out, probably once they saw the rain in the early hours of  Saturday morning.)

The weekend began on Friday morning where we had a practice sail up to cowes. This gave everyone the oppurtunity to meet each other, familiarise themselves with the boat and practice tacking, gybing and helming the boat. After a hearty lunch moored up in Osborne bay we sailed back downwind using the asymetric, I am sure I can speak for everyone when I say this was pretty exhilirating and all hands were certainly on deck. Once moored up everyone enjoyed a few drinks up at the bar, it was only a few due to Kenny making sure everyone was tucked up in bed by 11.

Five and a half hours later the team were up (and dressed in full wet weather gear) we motored up to cowes enjoying bacon sandwiches and coffees preparing for the start of the race at 06 40. After a nice start we tacked our way up to cowes in the midst of hundreds of boats to dodge and dive between, Pete, the bowman spotting all of the other yachts in our class and making mental notes to make sure we beat them. After a chopy pass around the needles we sailed downwind to St Catherines point surfing down some pretty big swells at around 13 knots at times, we opted to not fly the asymetric in the 25-30 knots of wind, our decision was confirmed to be a sensible one after passing a capsized trimaran and many boats broaching to. After an exciting beat upwind back up to cowes we passed the finish line at 14:49 in now brilliant sunshine, with a few sunburnt crew members on board. We were fortunate to get moored up at Sheperds marina in cowes, we were moored 7 boats deep which gave a fantastic atmosphere in cowes. What a better time to enjoy some doombars and crabbies at the pub in cowes. This turned into a fairly inevitable bar crawl followed by pizzas and some wine back on the boat.

After a lie in on Saturday morning, and more bacon rolls, Butterfly sailed back to its berth at Haslar Marina through the fog to bring an end to a succesful weekend racing and more importantly a fun weekend had by all.

Well done to Simon for guessing the correct finish time and thankyou of the to all of the guests for making it a great weekend, we hope to see you booking in for next years race.

This entry was posted on June 29, 2011 at 6:38 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Posted in BYC News by Kenny No Comments Yet