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April 30, 2007
The Weather Forecast – A Red Herring for the Ralph Herring
On Saturday my father and I were due to race in the newly formed short handed division of EAORA’s Ralph Herring race. With a starting line off of the Nas beacon near West Mersea we left a little after 20.00 Friday evening and arrived for some much needed sleep at about 02.00 Saturday morning.
The original forecast I had seen was for Saturday to be a fairly reasonable force 3 or 4 from the east. However much of the course was sailed in the high end of a force 6.
Our course took us on a wind over tide beat up the Wallet, around the Gunfleet sand by way of Medusa and then back down the Kings channel and into the River Crouch.
This was my first official shorthanded EAORA race as the organization now support this class of entry. Consequently I was able to use my shorthanded IRC certificate along with the water ballast.. Thank heavens.. I don’t suppose I would have got very far on the beat without it.
The reaching back down towards the River Crouch for me summed up why I like to go sailing. Our boat speed peaked out at 16 knots on one colossal surf and for most of the run back down our boat speed did not drop below 9 knots.
VIDEO. You can enjoy some of what I managed to capture during the easier moments here.
Please note. You need Quicktime or some other application that enables you to watch MP4 videos.
Paul
Posted by ninjod at 11:41 AM | Comments (2)
Server Crash
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Paul
Posted by ninjod at 11:11 AM | Comments (0)