A lovely leg

Sunday 27/6m 0630hrs
What a race! We had a blinding first day, making great progress down the
east coast and even managed a small tussle with Streamine, until we each
opted for different routes around the new Thanet wind farm - us to the West
and Streamline tot he east. Our cunning plan was to take the Gull Stream -
a narrow and shallow gat between Ramsgate and the Goodwin Sands, pop out in
front of them. Not so cunning, with a great big wind hole waiting to trap
us off Deal - which we promptly fell in to. By the time we extracated
ourselves, Streamline had passed us. But, to our surprise,, they then
crossed the shipping lanes (nice angle, boys!) and that was the last we saw
of them. The wind was very fickle, but we managed good time along the
coast, in beautiful sunshine for the most part, all the way to Beachy Head.
with only two hours left of tide in our favour, the wind died and we were
left stranded, once again. A line trawler was our only compand - that and a
load of niggly flies that tormented us in our wallow.
Then, just as we were contemplating a kedge, a southerly wind sprang up -
first barely a zephyr, but increasing ini strength until we found ourselves
trolling merrily along in 13kt of fair breeze. It was clear this was not a
gradient wind, but a very local effect, seemingly extending from about 500m
off shore to about a km out. We literally surfed this wave of wind all the
way to Brighton.
This amazing wind took us all the way to the transoms of our rivals, so we
now find ourselves in the company of Thunder, Taika, Izara, Fastrack and
Comedy of Errors, with Rafiki and Greyhound only a little ahead. Most of
these boats are in higher IRC classes than ourselves, so this is really
excellent. By careful trimming and tactics, we've managed to work ourselves
up to second place in the group of six. But thee wind is no longer with us
and a foul tide is mounting. My next task is to prepare the anchor for
kedging...
Trev