Sailing News
Are You Ready for an Emergency?
The Department of Transport offers you the chance to pit your skills in a 30 second emergency boating scenario at the club this Saturday night.
If you can don the provided life jacket, mimic setting off a flare, give a Mayday call and set off an EPIRB within 30 seconds, you stand to win not only the lifelong admiration of your sailing buddies but also a bailing bucket full of goodies!
PRSC invites you to take a crack at the prize at 5pm, before presentations at 5.30pm, followed by an opportunity to practice setting off any expired flares on the lawn in front of the club. See you there.
Neil Worrell, Sailing Director
Mary Maitland Makes Merry
From Des' Desk
Div2 skipper, Stephen Brown, blitzed the fleet in the heavy conditions on Saturday to win handsomely in a harbour course race. The strong winds from the previous two days had not abated with the southerly piping in at a steady twenty five knots with the odd gust up to twenty eight.
The windy weather probably deterred a few skippers with the thought of damage at the back of their minds. There is a saying at the club that if you can sail in Albany then you can sail anywhere.
There was a handicap start and Josh Hughes in Joker gave Brown a two minute start and Karen Timmins in Grey Moose five. Brown began brilliantly and sailed faultlessly throughout as he increased his lead on every leg. It was Brown at his best and his crew worked overtime to maintain their huge advantage.
Hughes tried everything with Joker but was left wondering how Brown had got so far ahead. Timmins, in her second competitive race, was sailing well and again showed her potential by completing the course in the tough going.
Brown took the honours with Hughes in second place and Timmins taking the third points.
One Viper skipper, Steve Dines, took the speedy Fang out and put on a display of awesome speed under spinnaker. On one leg with spinnaker a nasty gust forced a spreader to collapse. The crew quickly dropped all the sails and saved the mast from further damage and they were taken in tow back to the club.
Two Flying Fifteens had their first serious encounter and Simon Lucas in FForever Young gave Aileen Lucas in Crazy a two minute start, which as it turned out, wasn't enough. FForeverYoung quickly caught and passed Crazy as the conditions suited both the boat and the skipper. Simon Lucas took FForever Young to victory and at the same time praising the diminutive Aileen Lucas for her tenacity in the boisterous weather.
Geoff Oliver in Excitabull was left to sail alone when Gary Eaton found a crack in the mast on Faster prior to the start. Oliver completed the course without mishap and had fun in a duel with Stephen Brown towards the end of the race.
Picture: Stephen Brown, top, skipper of Mary Maitland with his hard working crew after Saturday' race.
Race Day photos
To see more of Des' race day photos, including contributions by others, please visit this link.
Casual Adventurer blog
Club member Richard Hodgson writes to PRSC from the World Cruising Club's ARC+ rally, which is preparing to take sailors across the Atlantic from Gran Canaria to the Caribbean via the Cape Verde archipelago.
For official event updates, visit this link.
"Preparations are in full swing at the Las Palmas Marina which is hosting the annual Arc Rallies. Currently there are three in preparation. The ARC rally, which sets out from the Canary Isles straight to St Lucia in the Caribbean. The second is the ARC plus, the one I'm involved with, which leaves the Canary Isles and heads south to Cape Verde before heading to St Lucia. A longer sail, so we'll sail a few days earlier than the other group. The third ARC rally is straight to St Vincent. All told some 300 hundred yachts in this year's event.
All kinds of yachts are represented, mono hulls by far the biggest cohort followed by a range of catamarans and lastly a smattering of trimaran. The crews for all these yachts come from very different backgrounds, semi professional, amateur skippers, family groups, and commercial yachting companies, of which I'm part.
The history of the ARC rallies comes from Jimmy Cornell's idea in 1986 to set up an event to allow anyone with a seaworthy yacht to sail over an ocean with confidence that they are not alone. With the rise of modern materials, increasing wealth and a sense of adventure the ARC rallies have developed into a wide ranging series of events enabling any skipper to join.
So why am I here? Simply to experience open ocean sailing. Yes, I could have sailed my yacht across an ocean but to sail from Albany, Western Australia, to the Canary Isle would take a vast amount of time an I'm not sure my current crew would be able to assist, something about having to work? So earlier in the year I started the process of trying to secure a crewing position using three different crew finder web sites, with limited success in securing a position. No, I didn't want to crew for someone sailing out of Penang.
So with time slipping by I made contact with two former skippers I sailed with when studying for my yacht master's qualifications. These two skippers decided to buy a large yacht and take people sailing to unusual locations, such as Greenland or to Estonia in the Baltic. For them the business took off and since 2012 the company Rubicon 3 has increased its fleet from one to four. I'm sailing on their latest acquisition, Bluejay, a 60ft clipper yacht built in 1996 as a world clipper yacht. She has gone through a recent refit. So in early July I bit the bullet and signed on as crew.
With a professional skipper and first mate, the rest of the crew are a mixture of adventurers and wannabe ocean sailors.
Now you have the background. My next post will be about getting ready for sea, training and enjoying the camaraderie of such a vast fleet."
To request membership of Richard's closed Facebook group where he blogs about the rally, visit here.
Richard Hodgson, from the ARC+ Rally