YMCT Leg 1. Falmouth to Kinsale

So, the first leg of our first race is over.  We made a great start off the line and were doing well from Falmouth down to the Lizard Peninsular (have a look at the video attached).  At that point, most of the fleet turned west, tacking across Mounts Bay towards Lands End, whilst we went further south looking for a better tidal flow and better winds.  Neither actually materialised so that left us approaching Longships Lighthouse just off Lands End about an hour and 7 nautical miles behind the fleet. That left us with a lot of work to do to improve our position. 

Longships

Through the evening and night, we worked quite hard to keep the boat speed as high as possible, using he code zero headsail for as long as possible, before changing to full white sails (mainsail and jib) as night fell.  Overnight the boat speed rarely fell below 9 knots and we gradually overtook most of the fleet.  We arrived in Kinsale at 11.08 BST on Monday 1^st June and were the fourth boat over the finish line.

Martyn on the helm approaching Ireland

To finish fourth in the water felt great after the mistake in Mounts Bay, but we fell towards the back of the fleet when the corrected times were published taking boat ratings into account. Tenth in class!  Ho humm…

Still, the ratings are there for a reason and are intended to punish mistakes right?  So bring on the next leg and we will do better.  The weather forecast at this stage isn’t looking great though – 30 knot winds for the first few hours and falling to around 18 knots in the 10-12 hours after that and wave hights of around 5 metres.  It’s going to be a pretty rolly sail on the way to Treguier.

Arriving in Ireland!

If you want to follow us a bit more closely, there is an informal tracker based on AIS at https://www.sailwave.com/results/YMTC26.htm  It won’t have great offshore coverage as it relies on AIS and therefore VHF coverage.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/4b672d_038017cc6a52481d9b162687837b90d1/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

The first few hours