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 Racing Event Pages, News & Reports
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| A very warm welcome to the Royal Southern Yacht Club's 2008 Racing Programme. |
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Here on the Racing home page you will find links to the latest news, results and files.
We could not host these events without the expertise and support of our volunteer members and staff, both afloat and ashore, so I take this opportunity to thank them all.
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I wish you all fair winds and enjoyable sailing in 2008.
John E Greensmith Chairman of Sailing Full Article Here |
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 Event Report: Euro Cat, Carnac 2008
in Event Reports
Posted
By: RSrn Website Team Read
By 141 Visitors |
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Event Report: Euro Cat, Carnac 2008
Hobie Dragoon 944
Andrew Sinclair & Tom Lyons |
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| Euro Cat is Europe's second biggest catamaran event, and this year sported 219 racing catamarans from high performance top of the range F18s to simple Hobie 16s and Dart 18s. It is held in the lovely bay of Quiberon , and is run from the Yacht Club de Carnac, though most people spend more time on the beach than at the Yacht Club. |
| My crew and I, Tom Lyons, were racing Hobie Dragoon 944. The Hobie Dragoon is 13 feet long, has twin trapezes, a self tacking jib and an asymmetric spinnaker. It is the junior training catamaran. |
| The event started on the Thursday, but as we had training with our RYA squad coach, Marcus Lynch on the Tuesday and Wednesday we left Portsmouth on Sunday evening and arrived at Carnac around midday on Monday having spent some hours on the bridge of the Brittany Ferries Bretagne with First Officer Olivier Raimbeaux who I have sailed with on various boats. Captain Jacques Brichet is also an active sailor, so I always learn a lot from those guys. Oh, and my mum loves it when they come and sit with us at the end of dinner! |
| We were up early on Tuesday hoping to have a day's sailing but when we got down to the beach it was blowing 25 plus knots and raining lightly so Marcus took us into the Yacht Club to do some work. The day was spent having sessions with Marcus, tuning boats and swimming. Due to the rain we ended up quite wet, and not before long I had put on full oilskins which I had luckily brought along. |
Wednesday brought better weather but still 25 plus knots of wind. As the sun was shining we sat on the beach and boats and Marcus went through rig settings with us and helped us set our rigs up to get the most out of them in certain conditions.
We had the afternoon off so I spent it checking the boat over for the racing the following day. At 6pm we registered and paid and then went out for a meal, where I spent most of time reading the Sailing Instructions. |
| Thursday dawned sunny with a nice 15-20 knots of wind. As the start was at 3pm and briefing at 1:30pm the squad headed out for a 1 hour training session at 11am, which got us used to the water that we would have to race in. As usual with the French the briefing was quite a few minutes late. |
We headed out after 2 o'clock in a lovely twin trapezeing wind, with quite big waves, which made the upwind a bit bumpy. The start of the first race was postponed but very soon it was under way. We made a fair start, but had the problem that most of the other boats starting in our class had bigger rigs than us, and were quicker than us, so it wasn't hard to end up in dirty air, so a quick tack right was required to clear our air, we rounded the windward mark in third place, popped the kite and powered away down wind, after gybing down towards the mark we were propelled down a wave and made a spectacular pitch pole with me flying over my crews' head.
We righted the boat quickly and got to the leeward mark headed off upwind again where we took a Belgian boat and a British boat skippered by Rob Alani. We sailed down wind a little bit more carefully on the final downwind to finish 5th. |
| There was a general re-call in race 2, but the second start was all clear and we made a good start sailing blisteringly quick upwind and a bit more carefully down wind. We rounded the windward mark in third place but sailed cleverly down wind and came out at the gate mark with a fine lead which we extended on the upwind and then conserved on the last down wind to win the race. |
| We got a good start in race 3 and but tacked off early, which didn't pay that race and rounded the windward mark third, we stayed in third place all the way downwind, at the leeward gate mark, the Belgian boat in second place went round the gate the wrong way, so some shouts of protest went his way. We powered upwind on starboard tack, taking both the Belgian boat in second and the Belgian boat in first, so when we rounded the windward spacer mark we believed to be in first place, but there ahead of us appeared the Belgian boat that was in first, he sailed directly around the windward mark missing out the spacer, some shouts of protest and go back went his way, determined now not to be beaten by this boat, we powered off down wind, we gybed earlier than him and sailed through the line in first place taking our second win of the day. |
Friday was the long distance race and Marcus had decided that it was not worth us doing it in the Dragoon, but it would be good practice to do the start, as there would be a large number of boats all starting at the same time. We looked at our results and found out that we were on equal points with two other Belgian dragoons; all 3 of us were on 7 points. The wind was fairly light so we weren't sad we were not competing in the long distance race.
The start, in usual French fashion, was much disorganized; it was meant to be a gate start, with the line split in two, the port end for the slower boats, like us, and the starboard end for the faster boats. But it was riddled with confusion from the start, as we did not know what actually was the gate boat, usually it is a competitor, but for this they used a rib, and due to several other reasons the start was all very confused. We sailed upwind for 25 minutes, and then as a squad grouped together and waited for Marcus, we 4 Dragoons rafted up and were very soon approached by 2 police ribs that were acting as rescue boats, after much discussion they were still confused with us, luckily Marcus sped up and took us away from their hand cuffs. |
We sailed down wind all the back to the beach practising our downwind work. I spent the after noon checking the boat over to make sure that nothing went wrong for the following days racing.
Saturday dawned bright and sunny with an 11am warning signal, we launched at 10am and were out on the course in plenty of time.
All that day the wind was forecast to swing from North East to South East, and at the time of the start the was around 10 knots of wind. |
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We got a fair start and headed out left as there was a strong tide taking us the other way.
When we tacked over onto port we were in about 3rd place, but very quickly we were able to power over the top of the Dragoon in 2nd place and were very soon shadowing the leader, the British boat of the Henson's, we tacked later than all the Dragoons but at the windward mark we were just below the lay line and we had to put a very quick tack in to get us round the mark. We rounded the marks and hoisted that kite still in second place, downwind was difficult as there was lots of concentration needed to keep the Dragoon going while still sailing as deep as possible.
At the leeward mark no visible loses or gains had been made and we headed of upwind on starboard tack, a little way up and we tacked over on a wind shift, we made small gains on the leader but we still were not able to get past them, the leader then tacked over, and I decided as we had a fair breeze and we were not on the lay line to carry on and not chase him. Doing this paid off big time, we tacked smack on the lay line and we were able to sail past the leaders who had to tack up the mark again and in doing so lost 3 places, we rounded the windward mark in first with a large lead and powered off downwind, we gybed and headed off to the finish, but the wind shifted and very soon I was trapezeing and my crew was sitting up to windward, we powered through the line with a nice lead to take our first win off the day. |
After a little wait the second race of the day got under way, but the breeze was dying. The start was awful, as when we had a good place an SL16 saw a gap, and at the end of the that gap was us, he powered straight into us, crashing into other Dragoons and forcing us to crash, luckily though the start was a genera recall so we got a second go. Our second start was better but by now the wind had nearly totally died away and very soon the abandoned that race, after a short wait the race committee sent us to the beach and Marcus towed us in.
After over an hours wait the race officer cancelled racing for that day. On the beach we realized that now as we won the only race of the day we were leading and we also had a discard so were on 3 points, so we simply needed to keep our nerve on Sunday and we could win! We packed the boat up and went and terrorized the lifeguard at the swimming pool at the campsite. |
On Sunday we had to get up very early due to the start being just after 9am. By 7.15 we were down at the beach only to find that there we very little wind and by 8am the postponement flag was up and flying. We sat around for several hours, knowing that we were not going to race, but as we were leading we could not risk packing the boat up yet, after a 3 hour wait, at 11am they cancelled racing, and Tom and I celebrated our first big win.
Very quickly we got down to packing the boat up so we could have the afternoon off. The prize giving was planned for 5pm but due to no racing it was changed to 2pm, I very nearly missed it because I did not know it was at 2pm but I was rescued by Adam Piggott on his mum's bike. |
| The prize giving was a great experience that I will always remember, I will remember this whole event for the rest of my life, as my first big international catamaran event, and I won my class! |
I would like to thank some people who have helped me on my way to this achievement. Grant Piggott, Adam Piggott and Lindsey Piggott, for believing in me and giving me loads of support and advice, and great sails. All the cat sailors at Weston Sailing Club who have helped me get to where I am, especially Phil Goddard and Chris Averis. Members of the Royal Southern who have helped me on my way through the years, and the Royal Southern Yacht Club Trust that helped the funding off this event.
Also I would like to thank my parents and god parents who made this even happen. And finally I would like to give a big thank you to my crew Tom Lions who sailed like a star all the way through the event. |
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A big thank you to everyone
Andrew Sinclair |
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Generic File Download
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While NOR's & Entry forms are now provided as 1 PDF other files
may also apply.
Please check the list below.
All competitors are advised to download and read the Sports-boats
safety document. |
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| Download | Sportsboat Safety Regulations 2008 | 29/02/2008 | 23.80 |
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