There was a vicious storm the night before the race and I was worried our buoy would drag. As I looked out the window I saw one unfortunate boat dragging their anchor. The morning was quite windy as well, about 20 knots gusting 25 knots would be my guess. I was blessed with a very lovely and experienced crew this year, my girlfriend Kate(who has sailed across the Atlantic) and one of her friends Sophie (who races quite a lot). We were running a little late for the start, lashing and stashing everything. I put the second reef in the main and reefed the jib. We sailed of the mooring buoy and practiced our first few tacks as a team, which went fine. Then headed for the start line, running down wind with the tide under us, we started 5 mins late.
We were goosewinging the whole first leg with the jib poled out with a broom stick:-) We spotted another bermudan rigged boat well ahead but could not pick out any others. I am very happy, with the dead down wind sailing in Valmik with second reef and reefed jib. We were making 7 knots at the most but averaging about 6 knots.
We rounded the first mark and onto a starboard beam reach. Heeling right over Valmik started leaking quite a lot. I switched off the automatic bilge pump as it was draining the battery. It was manual pumping from their on in, and I have two big manual pumps for this. I realized on this leg that my topping lift was still on, and my outboard engine was dragging. Must of been very excited to of missed these. Although dead down wind the topping lift did not look that bad or affect boat speed.
After rounding the next mark all boats had to sail into the wind and tide which were both quite strong. Some couldn't and dropped sails to motor. Valmik really leaked a lot during this leg, as we were close hauled and really pushing it into wind and waves. I had to tell Sophie, who was helming, to take it easy on the old girl. HAHA. At times I was struggling to keep up with the water ingress. If I left it too long whilst do some Navigation or check on our sailing, I had to call in a favor from my massive electric bilge pump. Which quite quickly pumped the water out with me helping on the manual pump. My wind generator and solar panel were doing quite well at keeping the battery topped up, after turning my automatic pump off.
We eventually got around the next mark near Whitstable and started heading back in. The tide must of slackened off a bit and we started really catching the other boats. The last leg was really good fun for my crew and I as it was all short tacks to windward. We were pointing higher and sailing faster than the other boats and must of overtaken at least 7 gaff rigged boats. But most importantly the other we had spotted Burmudan. Every time he tacked it took him 20 seconds to get his jib in, which slowed him down too much. With three of us on Valmik our tacks were very quick and we made no mistakes. I was very impressed with the Folkboats ability during this final leg, and would of loved the race to go on for another 2hrs in the same direction to see how many we could overtake????
We crossed the finish line and sailed down past our mooring buoy, dropped the main, sailed uptide on the jib and nice and slowly easying the jib to control our speed, picked it up. Perfect finish to the day of sailing. The boat stopped leaking straight away as we were no longer heeling over. This was a good indication that the leaking was only due to the topsides having not taken up. It was also only because we were pressing the boat so hard as well. The planks have had a lot of sun and heat this summer, and not much moisture to help them swell, which would most probably solve this problem.
We went in for the prize givings and I was over the moon when they called out "1st place Burmudan rigged challenge, Valmik" WOW, I got a trophy and a six pack of beer.
What a day. This is the most challenging sailing Valmik has done for quite some time. I have owned the boat for 5 years. And it was out of the water for about 4 years before I got her. To win this trophy really signifies my success with the restoration of this lovely little boat! It does not matter that there were only three boats all up in my division... :-)
I have just put a short video of the race on my public face book page. Follow this LINK to watch it, and like my page while you are there :-) Once again for those of you who are not signed up to face book, do not worry, you do not need to sign up to view this!!
