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Ok so we have a Bf 2 -3 NNE, and a first leg that is to the SW. The organising committee couldn’t have hoped for a better combination.

90% of the yachts have a spinnaker flying, and it is a great spectacle.

Quintessence doesn’t actually try to, spinnakers and novice crews don’t really go together, and even I have only been on boats with a kite up two or three times..

Still we are gaining on the boats ahead and actually manage to pass at least one with her kite up. We know we passed her, as the separation was only about 6 feet as we took the wind out of her sails and went past!

OK the next IRC class has now started, ten minutes after our group and there are a lot of spinnakers astern and coming up fast…

I recognise that spinnaker, here comes Prime Evil, the boat I was on for my Inverness to Gosport trip a couple of years ago.. 

Through Hurst Narrows, trying to stay in the fastest tidal flow and now what do we do about rounding the Needles?

Giles looks at the fleet ahead and reckons that the ebb is taking them well past and so if we aim for the lighthouse we will actually go diagonally past it…

Right so that solves the question that some of of the skippers might be asking “Just who was that goose-winging towards the lighthouse?”