Club Trip to Conwy
A passage over the Swatch and a race back.| Date | Saturday 17th May |
| Time | 0920 |
| Tide UTC | 17 0848 6.91 2117 6.89 0307 1.91 1529 1.41 18 0928 7.02 2153 7.07 0348 1.74 1606 1.36 |
| Crew list | Carolyn and Glen |
| Distance | 13.7 - Beaumaris to Conwy through Swatch 15.0 - Conwy to Beaumaris, taking racing line :-) |
Route
To Conwy and back
Notes
This was a trip organised by Dave Clough on Sarico - a number of boats attended from the club. Dave had booked us onto the Pontoons in the town.
Interestingly, the race back at 10am (Conwy Fairway, B6 then RAYC starting line) was called the Irene Goodwin; and required the Wives to helm. Since things aren't quite as sexist now, it's now the race where the crew do the helming whilst the normal skipper does the crewing. Anyway - even this is hard to determine on most boats - so in the end it was a women at the helm race, for whatever reason.
We were busy so were unable to reach Genesis until after everyone had left by half an hour. We caught up, under engine, at the Gates of Conwy.
Detente
The weather had been magnificent all week, so predictably it was chilly and windy on the day. And of course, the wind was on the nose.
Most of the participants had hot fish and chips and a few beers in the Liverpool Arms. Mick from Carmargue kindly offered to give us a lift there with his tender and super-power outboard (well, 3.5hp) but we took a water taxi back. The tide runs at 4+ knots here so it's hard work in a dinghy.
In the evening, we had a fantastic spread of food put on for us at the Cruising Club - really very kind of them. After discussing tactics in the race in the morning (put the sails up, win), we retired back to the boats.
The morning had slightly nicer weather, and now the wind was right behind us. We left the pontoons at about 9am thinking this would be plenty of time to get to the fairway for the 10am start time for the race. We rigged up the gybe preventer as detailed by Dave Winson a week ago. It worked brilliantly!
We seemed at one point to be pulling ahead of Whispered Secret:
Whispered Secret
However, not long after this, Derek put his spinnaker up and blasted ahead on the light winds.
Unfortunately, neither of us in the big boats had allowed enough time to get to the Fairway buoy - we arrive over 10 minutes late to the mark. Oh well - not much chance of winning after that!
Sarico was far in the distance at this point. We all took a mad course - our direct racing line back was rather longer than the route through the swatch that we took the day before!
In the end, Arrabella won the day by simply out-sailing us all and choosing the right course.
Next time... :-)