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Welcome to CMYC...dinghy Sailing club in Sussex
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The Mariners have a well deserved reputation
for being a very friendly club with a relaxed atmosphere, so if you're interested
in sailing, do feel free to come and visit us for a chat. Organised events
take place on most weekends from March to December, or take advantage of a free trial
sail on one of our Open days |
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THE VIEW FROM THE HELM
Junior Helm Week has once again been the highlight of the year for our youngest sailors. Boats with gallant names such as Endurance, Victory and Adventure set forth bravely from the Hedgecourt shore to engage the enemy with sponge balls. The 
sailing activities this year were interspersed with a day of raft building on the Tuesday and Kayaking on the Thursday. I visited on the Wednesday afternoon to face torrential downpours and thunderstorms. The enthusiasm of the young sailors was dampened not one jot by the conditions. A great time was had by all. Thanks must be said to Adrian for organising the event once again, to all the myriad of helpers who made the week possible and also to Andy Whitelock and his instructors who brought rafts kayaks and new ideas to the event. Ollie Townsend was the winner of this years Ferguson Plate which is awarded annually to the most improved Oppie sailor during Junior Helm Week.
Our Saturday Clubs continue to be well attended both on the junior and adult front. Start racing follows on from the Saturday club and if you take part you can avail of free advice and coaching on the water, something not normally permitted in racing events. Do come along and join in.
What about some Team Racing? Team racing is to class handicap racing roughly what croquet is to golf. It is not so much about aiming to get your own ball into the hole but about whacking your opponents off into the undergrowth and out of contention. In sailing terms team racing requires knowledge of the racing rules and of the five essentials. Deliberately misusing the latter to slow down, then slow an opponent down and so allow your team through to a winning combination is all part of the game. Team racing is the main form of inter university racing but is often sadly neglected by sailing clubs. It is some years since we have had double handed team racing on the lake but on the 11th September we plan a special team racing day with our friends from Lancing SC to race two teams in six RS Fevas on the Lake. We have a visiting RYA coach who will demonstrate the niceties or maybe the nastiness of this branch of sailing. If you want to know more about team racing then please visit http://www.farmoor.iofm.net/teamr/ Put Saturday 11th in your diary.
and finally, most of us have seen the amazing foiling Moths sailing off Hayling Island during our visits to Chichester Harbour on club cruises. We have watched in awe as they fly along four or five feet clear of the water balanced literally on a knife edge. It would appear that they have raised the bar yet again, out with the old fashioned sails, they now plan to fly Moths with wings! Have a look. http://foilborne.blogspot.com/2010_08_01_archive.htm
See you on the water. Donal
...... a series of special reports from Crawley Mariner's very own yachting correspondent, Allan Webber, on board the yacht, Qingdao taking part on the Pacific leg of the Clipper Round the World Race.
http://www.clipperroundtheworld.com/index.php/Home
I flew to China about five days before we are due to start the race from Qingdao to San Francisco. The five days in advance were intended to be for refresher training and to allow the crew to prepare and provision the boat - you can not imagine the amount of stores needed for 20 for 5 to 6 weeks at sea. Unfortunately as I am on Qingdao the home port boat, much of our time has been spent showing visitors around the boat (school children and local celebrities and officials) and attending corporate hospitality events. In fact the skipper said that in the 10 days he will have been in port, he will have racked up nearly 100 official events and introductions etc. including appearing on TV several times. The penalty of being the home boat in the stopover which makes the most of the Clipper Race visits of all Cities in the world. Absolutely incredible reception here. Thousands in crowds everyday. Almost continuous events, public music and fireworks. Crew whether or not in identifiable kit get stopped in the street and asked for autographs and photos. I have done one training/refresher sail but just to be contrary it was almost windless and quite warm. (Not now though.)
All this has to be coped with by the Qingdao Crew whilst preparing for sea. Masses of sail repairs needed and a lots of bits need replacing or repairing on the boat itself. After the problems had with Cork and Finland (which lost half of its mast when passing Taiwan) the Clipper fleet is getting a thorough check out, partly on the instructions of the insurers who I suspect are getting a bit worried about all the payouts they are being landed with.
Now about about Qingdao itself...... What I have seen of it is a modern vibrant and generally very clean and delightful place. Lovely facilities all around. Mostly built for the Olympics but being added to all the time. The people are lovely and friendly and so keen to help and talk and entertain you all the time. One penalty though is it is by no means a cheap place to live (with one or two exceptions which I will come to in a moment). Most goods and accommodation etc. appears to be similar or more than in the UK. On the up side though is that the locals at least appear to be very affluent. You ought to see the size of the Gucci store - bigger than most UK Department stores. I have never seen so many Mercs, BMWs and Ferraris driving around. Which brings me to the traffic. Generally horrendous with no lane or direction sign discipline but at the same time with no shunts that we can see. How they avoid one another at times is truly amazing.
There are one or two things which are cheap though. Taxis are about 1GBP for miles and miles. Some restaurants (not all) are cheap for food and drink. The Qingdao Crew have adopted an incredible local bar called Lennon's (as in John Lennon) run by a guy called Steve who was one of the early leggers on Qingdao. Actually most of the rest of the crew have found out about it and it has become the local meeting place. (Apparently it was also where the successful GB Olympic Sailing Fleet went.) Difficult to describe Lennon's except to say it is the last sort of place one would expect to find in a City in a Communist State. Like throw back to the hippy cum pop-star bars of the 60s and early 70s found in remote resorts in the UK, USA and Europe. Masses of signed and unsigned pop star photos and memorabilia. Live band every night, who do a brilliant act of Cream, Clapton, Stones and The Who (and occasionally The Beatles). The food is fantastic and masses of it. Nothing like UK version of Chinese. We stuffed ourselves silly for 5GBP. Drinks are unmeasured and cheap. Not that I indulged, but one crew member who is returning home soon having done his leg was drinking tumblers of good single malt whisky at 2.50GBP a go. You must visit Lennon's if ever in Qingdao.
Must go now as I can hear the fireworks starting (They are almost continuous at times) for another event I am expected to attend. I will try to give you another report after we have been at sea for a few days. Incidentally as we have some of the Cork boat crew on board, three of us have to hot bunk and guess who drew one of those!)
Look out for the next report. The hard-stuff is to come I fear. It is blowing up and very cold now.
Allan's Log
Date: Sat, 6 Mar 2010 17:24:23 +0000
The departure from Qingdao was spectacular. Locals made a big thing of
the whole visit. Qingdao -the boat took prime position in the parade.
Thousands watching and fireworks galore. two hour parade up the coast
and then back for the start.
Sort of beat from start to first mark near the end of the mole. Qingdao
second then and took lead as left the port to the delight of locals on
the mole. Pleasant days sailing first day modest wind and positions
changed repeatedly. Overnight slipped back a bit as wind came up. At
first I felt OK but as day and night went on I started to feel queasy
and tired. Separated from fleet for a couple of days as tried to gain
good position to sail around end of Japan. Squalls several days and
heavy rain.
Personally gradually recovering although a day down below on mother
duties did not help. At least I didn't get repeatedly drenched as heavy
rain and thunder at times.
Today struck a very good line or coarse around Japan with poled out
head sails beating others in sight using spinnakers. Australia is way ou
in front but as I write this we are challenging for second as now head
out into Pacific. Apparently very heavy winds ahead so Skipper is trying
to cut around south of them instead of having to beat into winds.
Battening down boat for a challenging few days.
All the best to my readers
Allan
Date: Sat, 13 Mar 2010 06:54:23 +0000
This will have to be a short message because I am tired and it is 3 hours already into my sleeping slot of 6. It has been a rough week in several ways although the old hands seem to take it in their stride ok as though it is nothing at all.Our bid to miss the rough weather failed so we headed north into the gales. Beats all the way. Did quite well for a while then a series of problems arose which have had to be tackled. Staysail halyard broke. Reefing line snapped. Clew of storm jib ripped out.Bilges filled up due to leak around mast and have to be bucketted out. Then mainsail ripped and has been down for three days being mended. Just some of the things. But we have still made progress under a storm trisail and in fact are apparently now catching up.I have recovered well from sea sickness. No ill effects now but I do have a cold developing and I am tired so goodbye for now. Will try agian later. Allan
Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2010
Big sea, strong winds mostly against us, rain at times and miserably cold. We continue to battle eastward and are in fact making good progress considering things. The mainsail was down for a week and had thousands of mends. Could not put it back up for days due to winds, used lots of different sail configurations and found some worked well including poling out headsails and using the storm trisail as a mini main. Apparently catching several of the fleet and as we are most north of all we are in a good position to make good use of downwind sailing when we get there, but that is about 5 days off yet. The crew are staying cheerful and active despite the conditions. In good heart today as the Cork boat guest broke open a few beers to celebrate St Patricks Day.
Cheers.See you in San Fran. Allan
We have just sailed through a horrendous storm and the messages we are getting suggest there is an even bigger one on the way and in the way we want to go. Why I say this is accounted for by what we have just experienced. At the height of the big storm which lasted for several days we were knocked down - not badly though and we had prepared the boat for it well and suffered no serious damage excepting that (i) lunch which I was helping prepare got spread all over the galley and in cupboards and (ii) water got into the Nav Station and drenched the computers (actually it came up the back through holes it was meant to drain away from). We lost both the navigation and meteorology computer with the weather grid files and the main communication computer. We were left with the emergency comms system and a slow spread small memory radio link computer which we used to down load stuff to reboot the main ones. That took days what with drying out the computers and then down loading stuff. In fact we had a 4 or 5 day black out. During this period we heard via the radio telephone about California which also resulted in a fleet comms blackout although we were comms less anyway.
It took about a week for us to get all things back in order and we are still not sure whether e mails are getting through. Whilst we were out of touch we got two messages via the radio telephone. One from race control ordering all boats to sail south out of the way of a major storm ahead. Another from one of the boats with full comms said there is a typhoon strength storm brewing at xxxxxxxxx and it is about 1000 miles across at least. We plotted that on a paper chart and found that as we were then about 150 miles north of all the other boats and moving south would not get us out of the way of the storm, we have sailed on regardless. I say sailed for we still have 3 sails up - the storm jib (aka Yankee 4), the staysail (aka "feel the power" it gives) and the trisail (aka mini main). All lines, halyards sheets strops, shrouds and stays are at least doubled up and the main and boom are lashed down on the deck. We are actually still sailing (CMG) at about 5 knots on a beat and up to 18 on a reach or a run though often F10 winds and 60 foot waves. And we are still safe and intact. Our aim is to get so far ahead of the others that when they restart racing they can not catch us even with redress. Hard work though. We are in good spirits and celebrated crossing the date line and one of the crew's birthday with chocolate and coke. In fact Blue had two birthdays because it stardddled the date line.
Will try to give more news when I can.
Allan
Date: Wed, 31 Mar 2010 00:52:03 +0000
We spent several days negotiating a mega size depression with massive seas and 50 to 60 mph winds. Still experiencing the aftermath in terms of squalls and high seas. Spent a few days trying to get about 150 miles ahead of Jamaica to allow for the redress they were likely to get for stopping to help California. Yesterday though they got 32 hours redress which means we would have to be 300 miles ahead to take 2nd place so now we are cruising to SF no risk to boat crew or sails. Hope to be second across the line and placed third after redress but still wonder about what allowence Australia will get.
Expect to arrive late Thursday or Friday morning. Aim is to arrive safe and well in front of Singapore.
See you soon I hope. Allan
Date: Fri, 2 Apr 2010 05:15:46 +0000
We crossed the line at about 1:45 pm our time, 4:45 pm local time and goodness knows what time in the UK. Finest day for 4 plus weeks for sailing which is ironic as we are only going to race half of it. The skipper and rest of the crew have been magnificient. We believe we are almost the most intact boat out here. Main sail ripped and some stancions bent but otherwise intact. Most others including Cape Breton, Australia and Jamaica have lots of serios damage which might cost them points in the end!
We are now racing to beat USA Immigration so we can get off the boat tonight - for showers, different food and drink and possibly a hotel bed. Allan
Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2010 20:31:54 +0000
Hello everyone. Cant recall if I sent the promised final e mail. Did a lot in the euphoria of arriving safely last Thursday that I can not recall clearly now. Sorry if some of the following is a repetition.
Our watch woke up at 7:30 am last Thursday knowing we had about 80 miles to go to the finish line. Then we were told that it had been moved 50 miles to the south. You ought to have heard the comments then! After a while the "mate" filling in the hourly log asked what date and some one looked at their watch and said 1st April!!!!!!! Best days sailing of four weeks as we crossed the line at about 1:45 our time, 4:45 local time and just gone midnight in the UK. Raced into San Franscisco under the Golden Gate Bridge as it was getting dark aided by a squal and a 30 second surf at about 23 nots. Hurtled towards the bridge, coast and rocks almost out of control. nearly the most frightening experience of the whole race!
Docked at the Golden Gate Yacht Club (now the home of the America's Cup) at just before 9 to find that three US Immigration Service Officers had been persuaded to stay to let us in. Otherwise we would have had to stay on the boat tro the next morning. We truimphantly went into SF late at night and nearly ate a local diner out of food, a feat repeated the next day in a Chigago Pizza restaurant where the manager tried to tell us we had ordered too much (he was wrong......)
We were euphoric as we had come across in almost record time (Cape Breton excepted) in what is now said to be the longest and hardest leg ever in Clipper Races. Moreover we had arrived safely with no major breaks to the boat in contrast to others who are all really battered and broken. Only one serious injury too - one guy with 3 broken ribs. The fact that we were in a good state cost us though for we became the boat for everyone to visit and for corporate hospitality trips out into the bay. We had to spend days cleaning and tidying up the boat.
Six other boats came in in the days following us, including California with a stump of a mast. On Tuesday we had the official results and presentation when we were declared as third. Second across the line but as Jamaica hadbeen given 32 hours for rescuing California and arrived only 18 or 19 hours after us they were rightly awarded 2nd.
Nevertheless our pride at what we had achieved knows no bounds. A great experience only slightly paled by some memories of the misery of sailing at the height of Force 10 storms and in 60 feet waves. However those memories will fade in time and what will be fixed in my memory will be the feeling of what we had achieved - we safely sailed across the widest ocean in some of the wirst storms for many a year. We did it as a team and it feels great even now 6 days later.
All the best to my readers..... Full account when get back to the UK.
PS San Francisco is a lovely place. Lots to see and the people are brilliant.
Allan