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July 18, 2005

Nore Race

On Sunday the 17th of July Theo and I sailed Ninjod from the Crouch to the Southend Peir to participate in Benfleet YC’s Nore Race.

I woke at 0400 and attempted to wake my only crew for this specific event, Theo. By 0500 we were leaving the house and we were not underway until 05.38. I had planned to be underway at 0500 but having a teenage son as your only crew seriously constrains your ability to meet early morning deadlines.

We left the Crouch with no wind and motored as fast as we dare. The tides, both in the Thames and the Crouch were not doing us any favours. This combined with Ninjods 2 blade folding prop and a Yanmar 2GM20 ensured that we were not going anywhere fast. We ended up being 30 minutes late at the start having watched all the other competitors past us as we sailed ( engine was off at the correct time ) towards the starting line.
Nore Race 2005 - Course A

There were 72 yachts in our group, we put our heads down and cracked on as fast as conditions would allow. I was loathed to put a kite up with just my son on board. We overtook pretty much everything and we ended up being the 5th boat home. Looking at the times published had my silly son woken up on time I would have been the 1st boat home. While I was disappointed he was clearly angry at himself, he lay down and promptly fell asleep.. GRRRRR Teenagers..

The whole event was run on PY handicap system and I now know that the PY number for a JOD 35 according to Benfleet YC is 860.

Next year I will make the start on time….

Posted by ninjod at 03:52 PM | Comments (0)

Santander – The Route home

On Friday the 8th of July my son Theo and sensible yachtsman Eric arrived in Santander. Our plan was to leave Santander on Saturday the 9th of July and do a non stop passage back to the river Crouch.

During the early hours of Saturday morning we left Santander and headed out into Biscay. For some considerable time there was very little wind at all. As the wind speed improved a little the wind direction worsened and we found ourselves beating to cross Biscay.

We were visited by lots of Dolphins and even saw a couple of Basking sharks.

Our route home took us through the “Raz de Sein” and the “Chenal du four”. While the raz was like a mill pond the four was very bumpy. Our 1st attempt at beating through it saw us turn around 180 degrees and retreat to a safe place while we changed our sail plan before trying again. The reduced sail plan worked well and we save ourselves some considerable time.

Whenever the wind dropped to nothing we drove forwards using the engine. We thought it would be wise to take on more fuel and chose Yarmouth as an easy place we could stop for an hour before cracking on. Having promised us all fish and chips my father rushed off to find a chippy while we remained to re-fuel.

As we headed out of Yarmouth and into the Solent we unwrapped our chips and were unhappy. The chippy my father visited in Yarmouth was not good.

On Friday the 15th of July at 0500 we arrived at the Crouch.

Posted by ninjod at 03:28 PM | Comments (1)

Solent -> Santander

As I write this I am sitting aboard NINJOD on a mooring outside of our host yacht club at Santander. Yes, phew what a relief… We have finally finished one although it was not without incident.

At our 10 minute warning the spinlock tiller arm extension broke off at its rubber flexible hinge thingy. Now in fairness to my wife, who confesses not to know that much about boats (or so I thought) , she saw its condition before our departure and was sure it was going to break, she politely suggested that we replace it. We ( my father and I) assured her that it would not and that if it did it would be engineered with a wire through the flexible hinge thingy thus ensuring functional use without flexible hinge thingy. Needless to say that there was no wire and arms like Popeye were required to manoeuvre NINJOD in the fresh winds.

With one issue on the issues list before the start and no more required NINJOD’s entire electronic instrument system crashed. The NKE topline bus just would not work. We had no depth, wind, log or anything useful information. The night before during the pre-race briefing we had been warned of the navigation perils of the Solent, the thought of tacking out of the Needles without depth information was thoroughly depressing.

We popped a reef in the main and headed off out of the Solent very slowly Fortunately for us we discovered Sleuth Hound and followed them through the final tricky exit into deeper waters.

Our strategy in the English channel was to beat down our rhumbline. It was a painful process but we were pleased to catch some boats up. On the 4th of July we saw Ushant.

The seas around Ushant were large. It was like someone had used a JCB to dig huge holes in the sea, many of which we fell into. At one point while on the helm I found myself an inch or 2 in the air as we fell off of the top of one wave into a hole. We called in at 11.15 on the 4th of July are reported that we were round Ushant.

While our 1st night in Biscay went well our 2nd night gave us a pretty fresh squall came through that left a long split in out mainsail. We reefed to reduce the likelihood of the problem getting worse and carried on, albeit slower.

We arrived in Santander on the 6th of July at 09.52. I was pretty pleased with our elapsed time of 94 hours 32 minutes and 48 seconds given all the issues we experienced and the awful beat out of the English Channel.

I am no longer a Biscay Virgin.. Hoorah.. and as was the case with the 1st shorthanded race I did ( The Triangle ) this event proved to be huge fun socially. I made some new sailing chums, met up with some old ones and, perhaps most important, I learnt a lot about me and NINJOD.

Posted by ninjod at 01:57 PM | Comments (0)