Shearwater TT at Worthing Sailing Club

I was amazed to see that 11 Shearwaters arrived at Worthing Sailing Club from far and wide over the weekend of the 10th and 11th of September.

This on the face of it doesn’t appear to be something to be amazed about, but and it’s a big but. When your sailing Cats on the open ocean and you’ve been hearing all week that the tail end of a hurricane will be hitting the South coast at the same time as your sailing event the normal decision is to stay at home.

The Shearwater fleet though is different. We have such a strong bond of friendship gained through sailing together over the years and its that that gives us the impetus to make the journey, hoping that we will get some sailing in but not minding too much if we didn’t sail at all.

Worthing is a good club, from the moment we stepped into the bar and was asked “how much do you think we should charge for a pint of beer” I knew that we were in for a good weekend.

Contrary to the doom and gloom being forecast by all and sundry the weather was almost perfect. We had a 2 -3 blowing from the S/W in good sunshine with three races scheduled back to back. We were sharing the event with Dart 18’s and it was decided that we would have a windward / leeward course on Saturday with triangles and sausages on the Sunday.

Chris our race officer sorted the course quickly and we were away almost on time. This set the scene for a good days racing.

All three starts had a bit of port bias and three or four cats had a go with varying degrees of success. The windward mark was a long way off and the wind shifts made each beat interesting. Greg and Alex on Foreigner, deeply disappointed that it wasn’t blowing sailed really well all day as did Darren and Catherine on Shear flamboyance. Roger and Dion sailing on Ruby always a threat crept over the line.....just in front Nigel and Sandy on Simsek and Janet and Rob on Alley Cat.

The second race again was very tight but Shaun and Claire on Carbon Footprint got away leaving Nick and Kerry on Cajensa and Grace and myself on UFO to swap places with Ruby, Alley cat and Simsek.

As usual no place in a Shearwater race is given up easily and Barry and John on New Flame was fighting off Murray and Lou on Diligaf (who by the way did not break anything) as well as Nick and Chris on Cosmic Shear.

Carbon footprint won the last race of the day with the rest of the fleet swapping places at every opportunity.

The club put on a fantastic spread for us all and dancing to live music finished off a very good day for both Shearwaters and Dart sailors alike.

I woke on Sunday snuggled up in my campervan to the ominous boom of a large shore break and to the wind desperately trying to rip my drying wet suit from the line outside. I knew then that the racing would be binned and turned over for a bit of extra sleep.

The racing was officially cancelled at 10 am and we spent a nice morning packing away in very blustery conditions.

Shaun and Claire won the event with Nigel and Sandy second and Janet and Rob third.