Day Two: Long Island Course

The "longtails" we take out to the boats each morning
(click to enlarge)

And a much better day, at least with wind throughout. The Race Officer, Ross Chisholm sent the whole fleet IRC and ours off on course five, a 27 miler south round the Islands.

First beat to the wing mark, then long lay to the Island rounding a beat to a cardinal mark, where we made a lot of ground on the fleet which rounded had us hoist our A1 spinnaker to the gate and down to the finish, a nice shy spinnaker run at 8+ knots in 9 knots breeze, where again we did well. Overall, we felt we sailed well and without mistake, though we couldn't quite pip the Swan 68, Titania of Cowes which took corrected time honours nine minutes over us in the four hour race, with Xena second and Baby Tonga third.  Titania only gives us 2.13, and yet she's long-legged in the reaches, so she's going to be hard to rein in.

The crew heads out in the longtail. G, Bicky, Iris, Grant, TC, Cookie
Stevo, Pip and Jing.  (Click to enlarge)

Altogether a happier result for us and a happier crew resulting.
We bank that and look forward to hopefully having a couple of windward/leeward races coming up. In these we have a chance of doing better against the big Swans, as we're a bit more manoeuvrable in the shorter up-wind and down-wind races.


Note to FBR's ("Family Blog Readers", aka non-sailors).  The "Corrected Time" is the one that counts in working out who won a race. It's calculated by applying a Time Correction Factor (TCF) which is a number like, in our case, 1.219.  It means that the time we took to finish a race (our "Elapsed Time") is multiplied by 1.219 to give "Corrected Time".  Titania of Cowes has a TCF of 1.256, so she rates a bit higher, and has to finish the race not just before we do, but also a specific time in front of us, in order to win.  Specifically, she has to finish 2 minutes and 13 seconds faster than us, each hour of the race, or in a four hour race, 8:25 mins in front. But, she's a very fast boat, 68 feet length (we are 55'), built as a racer, and she have very long legs, and does well in reaching conditions that we had today, such that she's virtually uncatchable, and so we moan about her handicap being too low (of course!).  Then again, I recall that people were a bit dark last year, when we came first in the first two races as well. As you can imagine, these TCFs are a source of constant discussion and dispute amongst sailors, one's own handicap is always too high and that of the opposition always too low!  If you are a faster boat, and have a higher TCF than another boat, you are said to "give time" to them; and if they have a higher TCF than you, they "give time" to you.  Alles Klar?
Screenshot of results below the fold