Hot Toddy Trophy 2002

(Copied from Flypaper, 20 May 2002)

Launched Fly Friday night, rigged and tuned Saturday, raced (Hot Toddy Trophy) Sunday.

Sailed five up (crew = Peter, Twig, Al, Iona, Jackie) in plenty of wind with a fetch to the Garvellachs, a white sail reach back and a seemingly endless surf to 11.1 knots under main and no.3 as we turned the bottom end of Eileach an Naoimh. But even a finish in 5¼ hours after averaging approx. 7 knots for the whole course wasn’t good enough as we were hammered by Farr Out by ¼ hour on handicap and narrowly lost out (by approx. 1 minute) to Trip Trapper and Hot Toddy to place fourth out of four!

It was a thrilling sail, the new no.3 looks great and it was so close for second, third and fourth that the minor placings are almost irrelevant, but I’m afraid we still have work to do if we’re going to be fighting it out with Farr Out. So the angles and conditions might have suited her and perhaps we shouldn’t have held the no.1 for the whole return leg, but we simply can’t live down a thrashing like that every weekend!

On the positive side, the number of significant changes to Fly (new rudder, new inboard, new rigging, new no.3 and less weight) mean that we’re sailing quite a different boat to the end of last season and it may take a few outings to adjust...

Let’s hope so, anyway!

Feedback to sailing@petestack.com

Valid HTML5