admin June 2, 2024 Sailing Previous Blog Bourne End Week Comments (0)
Some days never turn out as planned. The sun shone. There wasn't a cloud in the sky. We arrived at the club at 10am knowing we had to move the boat from the boat park onto the grass by the Thames and that we would need to fill in a hole and move some bunting to get the boat in, take part in the handicap race and have some fun sailing too. But that wasn't what happened.
We were off to a good start. we extracted the boat from the boat park and loaded it up with all the sailing gear and took the boat across the railway line. The Toura is heavy and its double wheels caused us problems in the potholes in the newly repaired road. We can fixed this.
So out came the spade and wheelbarrow and we spent some time filling in many of the pot holes from the boat park to the railway crossing. Four barrow loads disappeared into the holes and soon they were level.
We couldn't put the boat in its place because the mast was higher than the bunting. But that didn't really matter because we were going to put the boat in the water and go sailing. The bunting would have to wait until later, but as things happen some of the safety boat crew hadn't turned up and another Paul and his two small kids were all that was available to support the race. Alistair, running the race asked if we could help and of course we did , so I took to the safety boat and my Paul said that he would ready the boat, so if safety boat team turned up we could take part in the second race.
The OK race took part in very light winds that we either gusty or no wind. The race was in two parts - the boats that got to the end mark and had some wind and the rest of the boats that arrived and found no wind and had to amble around the mark.
Although Paul has his RYA sailing 1 and 2 applying these skills in another boat is difficult so a member of the club gave Paul so tips on boat Helming.
With all the cameras working we could capture all the video of the boat from every angle.
After Lunch sitting on the wooden seats on the Banks of the River Thames watching life sail past, it was our turn to set up all the cameras on the boat and then get the Toura into the water for some Fun Sailing. The boat had had its Jib upgraded. Now on one side (Port) we had an orange rope and on the other side ( Starboard) we had a blue rope. The Port and Starboard sides were now called Orange and Blue. The wind was now very light ( 4 km/hr) but gusty to about 15 km/hr. So with more than a considerable amount of effort we left the jetty and sailed away from the clubhouse. As with earlier in the day the wind was reasonable outside the clubhouse, but moving 100 or so metres up stream the wind was blocked by the trees and there was very little wind. Being on the far bank to the club we were pushed by the little amount of wind into the bank and some trees. We couldn't reverse and so we needed a pull from the safety boat to get us out into the middle of the river. We found that moving too far upstream meant that we were not making much progress, so we decided it was better to stay near the club. Now and again the wind caught us and Paul was up on the bulwark to prevent us capsizing. the gusts were strong and we created a bow wave.
After an hour or so we moored at the Jetty and I got out and Alistair got in to crew and help Paul master the boat more effectively. Paul got a more effective crew who seemed to know what they were doing.
Sailing over we now had to fight with the bunting to take it down and then move the boat into place and then put the bunting back up. When we arrived all the equipment came in the boat on the way back to the car we were laden like pack mules.
