Zurich Channel Week

Ups and Downs… Channel Week is over. It was a fantastic event, although it was somewhat marred by a gear breakage. The first leg, from The Solent to Alderney, had to be abandoned due to lack of breeze. The second leg, from Alderney to Jersey, was shortened, but Dinah did well. First of the three JOD’s, and a good overall placing. Just after a fantastic start the next morning off Jersey one of the mainsail batten cars up the mast exploded violently, spelling an end to sailing for the day. I retired back to Jersey to organise a replacement part, and motored on to St Malo later that day following the fleet. I also missed the day race around St Malo as the parts didn’t arrive until late the next morning. But now Dinah was ready for racing again. A long spinnaker reach from St Malo to Geurnsey had Dinah and Audacious within twenty boatlengths of each other the whole way. Dinah sneaked ahead in the last five minutes to finish as first JOD again. Very pleasing!

Running Up Little Russel, Geurnsey

The last leg from Geurnsey to The Solent was a windy spinnaker run. The picture above was taken about a half an hour after the start. Dinah, on the left, is in second place on the water just behind Audacious. By sunset Dinah was lead JOD again, but during the night as the breeze died down I should have switched to a bigger spinnaker. The other two JODs sneaked through in the darkness. I certainly can’t blame the boat, I should have known to change kites, but I didn’t. One of those lessons that comes with experience I guess.

Cowboy

All in all, it was a fantastic event. The overall results obviously don’t mean much, having missed two legs out of five. Audacious won overall, so to have beaten him in two of the three legs I completed is great. It shows the boat is on pace. I’m not too far off the pace myself. And once I break and fix everything thats going to break then Dinah should be unstoppable! I’m much happier learning about the batten cars being weak now, even at the expense of a good overall result in this event, rather than in the middle of the Atlantic next year. Softly softly catchee monkey…