October 2008 newsletter

Bursledon Regatta From Max Taylor

Bursledon Regatta offered a chance, for the few local gaffers who couldn’t attend the annual Solent OGA race and rally, to get out and race over the bank holiday weekend. The 2008 Regatta theme was Camelot and as usual the Elephant Boatyard had erected a fantastic stage. Many of the Saturday visitors turned up dressed as knights, wizards and damsels.
I had intended to enter Tosh, our Cornish Cormorant dinghy in the Saturday dinghy racing, but the winds were very light and since at 12’3” Tosh shares the start with the Lasers, light air lethargy took over. Instead I launched our skiff off Swanwick Hard and rowed down river to have breakfast in Hamble, overtaking much of the dinghy fleet on the way!
At 15’4” our home built skiff “Gato Negro” is too long to enter the rowing races which are the mainstay of the Saturday afternoon regatta. But I consoled myself by overtaking a few of the Hamble Gigs during practice just to prove a point!!
The high spot of the afternoon is the fancy dress carnival, which featured a number of “floating” castles built on dinghies being rowed around the pool in Bursledon outside the Jolly Sailor. The winner of the event was a dinghy/castle, complete with working drawbridge and a distressed damsel in one of the four towers. As usual the Saturday night torch-lit parade of dinghies was followed by a spectacular firework display.
For Sunday’s keelboat racing the winds had picked up. Only four boats turned up for the gaffer’s start including a Yarmouth 23 which was rumoured to have an enormous asymmetric. Below Calshot and out into the middle Solent, the wind really got up. Not having wind instruments (other than a wet finger) I would guess it at 18-25 knots maybe more in the gusts. Wet and bumpy on the beats and a wild ride on the long, downwind leg.
Although we led for a while, Greg Dalrymple slipped past us in Fugal, his very quick Memory, at about two thirds the way around and we never managed to catch him. We held on to second in Greta – Cornish Yawl and the Hamble Sea Scouts came in a creditable third.