eNAyeCea Racing

We had a great day out on the water today on Vagabond with Barry Rosen et al on Argo.

It was a marathon course with RPYC which took us into the depths of Blackwall Reach, fighting the ferociously feisty and fluttery squalls which come with those high walls

Racing came down to the wire, with Argo rounding poplar a breath ahead and racing up Mounts Bay Road. Vagabond was tracking nicely all day, and had gained good gauge on Argo on the port beat hugging mounts bay, so when they attacked onto starboard, we were forced to keep clear, tack, and match their board. We then proceeded to extend an increase gauge coming ever closer to the critical layline to the Crawley mark.

While we were increasing gauge, vagabond was still not clear to return onto the port tack without impeding the Starboard Argo. Lucky for vagabond, Argo had decided they were close enough the Layline to proceed with changing board, and relieved us of our periless and punishing predicament.

With this pressure off, we prepared ourselves to make the perfect tack. Only to be undone when the leech of the jib caught on our port spreader and we were caught in an impromptu and involuntary heave to.

In an effort to resolve our predicament, the main was blown and we headed back to Poplar to set up a following wind angle to encourage the leech of the jib off the spreader and to fill with the sails setting wing-to-wing.

Having cleared the leech of the jib we then proceeded to limp home finishing well behind the yet again victorious Argo.

We at eNAyeCea racing have a long way to go in this journey that is campaigning as it was only be the grace of the coral forming around the keel of Argo that we even had a look-in today. The Argo sails were set extremely well all day and their choice in wardrobe was yet again spot on. We didn’t have as much trouble with the course as we did last week, which was our saving grace, because those homs on Argo seem to know the river like the back of their hand.