Sunsail Series 2020 Reports
Round #2 - 21/22 March 2020
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Report:
We chartered The Magenta Project. However we were the only remaining entrant (!!) and so we ended up having a cruising weekend in the Solent, enjoying the new Sunsail Jeanneau 41.0 for the first time.
The conditions Saturday were ENE 25 knots with gusts of over 30 knots. Sunday proved to be a tad up and down with ENE 18 knots becoming 15 knots later with gusts of 24/25 knots. Both days, ebb tide most of the morning and early afternoon 290deg 2.5+ knots
We were very keen to take the 'new' boat for a sail, even though the forecast was slightly more we would have preferred for a first outing. In light of our situation, I thought it might be useful to treat this as a 'test-sail' and turn this into an opportunity for 'us' to feedback to you on how it all went.
We slept in Port Solent on Friday night, then exited the marina on Saturday morning, going over to our favourite racing area between Lee-on-Solent and Ryde. We stayed over at Cowes on Saturday night and were back in Port Solent mid-Sunday afternoon.
To capture our thoughts on the new boat: she is very good looking and lovely inside. Clearly a Mediterranean Cruiser designed for short-handed sailing with stern-to mooring as the norm, her freeboard is a bit on the high side for side-to mooring, and old-timers like me ... The Jeanneau 41.0 gets a fair old lick of speed on and will be a different war-horse to the battle-hardened F40 that we have been used to. There are some big safety improvements over the F40 that we are really please with and we're looking forward to doing some more racing as soon as possible.
Round #1 - 7/8 March 2020
Report:
The forecast for Saturday was 18-25 knots from the SW, which proved to be the case. We partook in 4 races on the Saturday and included a 1st place, which wasnt bad for starters.
We adjourned to the delights of Cowes, mooring up at Shepards Marina, just catching the last 15 minutes of the England-Wales game at the Anchor. After a fishy evening meal, we enjoyed a jar in the Cowes Ale House, followed by a return to the Anchor and the dulcet tones of "Dirty l'il Secret", a local rock band, who were excellent !!!
Sunday saw us blessed with a spritely 25 knots from the WSW. Over the morning this built to 28-35+ knots, and the proceedings were temporarily held off whilst a full-on 40+ knot squall swept through the race area. During this squall, we dropped the main and evacuated to the peaceful lee of the IoW (and duly missed the start of the 6th race !!). Anyway we got a further 4th and 5th place and finished the w/e an overall 3rd out of 6 boats, which is a cracking start.
The Shustoke Offshore Racing Section crew comprised Tony, Mark, Simon, Felix, Alex, Jan and Geoff; Jane should have been with us, but unfortunately had to pull out at the last moment. Well done team, and welcome to Jan who also does some dinghy sailing at Midland SC.
Race Courses:
- Race 1 - 43-4X-42-5C-43
- Race 2 - 43-4X-42-46-4X-43
- Race 3 - 43-4X-42-46-4X-43
- Race 4 - 43-4X-43-4X-46-43
- Race 5 - 43-4X-42-43-4X-4U-42-43
- Race 6 - Squall - DNS
- Race 7 - 43-4X-42-43-4X-43
Final Race Results: 4 / 1 / 3 / 4 / 4 / DNS / 5 out of 6 boats: overall of 3rd place. Download Results PDF
Logged distance - 79nm
Last updated 15:28 on 12 November 2023