Sail Caledonia 2013

[Jonathan Stuart]

I have added my photos to this gallery.

What Graham modestly omitted to say was that he not only won the Swallow Boats class but was also the overall winner of Sail Caledonia 2013. Congratulations Graham!

Jonathan

[Jonathan Stuart]

The highlight of Sail Caledonia for me was probably the Loch Ness Challenge - for the challenge of the sail as much as the race. I have had a look at my GPS track for that day and we sailed 44.36 miles (38.5 nautical miles) with a max speed of 5.65 knots (on a beam reach). If anyone's interested here is a link to a map showing our track:

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/322707845

[Graham W]

Here's my track for the same day using HomePort - not as useful as Garmin Connect but better than nothing. Just under 38nm total distance, with a bit of rowing (assisted tacking) in the mid section of the upwind leg.  Maximum speed 6.0 knots at the NE end, maximum depth 230m (with fish showing down to 110m), minimum water temperature a chillsome but apparently normal 6°C.

[Graham W]

The detailed raid results have now been posted by John Macpherson http://www.sailcaledonia.org/page40.html

John's photos are eagerly awaited. In the meantime, Kathy Mansfield has posted some wonderful pictures of the raid on her own website http://www.pbase.com/kathymansfield/sailcal

[Jonathan Stuart]

For those that like to over-analyse things as much as I do, attached is a spreadsheet containing the 2013 race and class results by race and boat.

[Graham W]

The skipper looked sternly at his crew.  "Shipmates", he said "we are about to take on the endeavour of our lives, er, again.  I can offer you nothing but toil, sweat, cramp, blisters, a sore bum and if you pull the wrong piece of string, blood and tears as well.  This is a sail & oar raid, which means that if there is no wind, it becomes an oar & oar raid".

And so it proved.  With often feeble winds for this time of year, we ended up doing quite a lot of rowing.  Four of us had an oar each in the rowing races, without a helm and with only car wing mirrors for guidance.  Three of us often rowed in the sailing races, while the fourth member of the crew acted as a member of the RIB safety boat team.

Our aim was to beat as many of the five other BayRaiders as possible, helped by four long oars, a master sailing tactician (my brother-in-law), a conventional jib on a short bowsprit and the aforementioned toil, sweat, etc.  We all have the blisters to prove that we put in the effort.  We also gained an insight into what it was like to be a Viking but without the usual shoreside perks. 

If the wind drops below about 5 knots on the nose, instead of clawing slowly to windward, it is usually a lot quicker just to sheet in the main, furl the jib and row straight upwind until you hit the next patch of breeze.  The boat that habitually beat us, Sommarvind, a Stora jaktkanoten from Sweden (overall winner in 2011), barely bothered to raise their sails on some sailing days and rowed like Vikings possessed.

When we were fortunate enough to sail, the BR20 behaved impeccably as always and then was only consistently outpaced by Lapsus, a beautiful Dutch Valk keelboat of 1941 vintage.  Tarika, a 17' BayRaider gave us a spot of bother when sailing on Loch Oich, beating us by four seconds.  My excuse is that I didn't notice the obvious drag from our unraised outboard until we were a third of the way around. They also chased us closely over the line in the final sailing race on the Beauly Firth.  The BayRaider Expedition Mallory had the nearest scores to ours by doing well in both the sailing and the rowing.  In a raid like Sail Caledonia, if you want a good placing, you need to do consistently well in all the races, regardless of the conditions.

Our focus on consistency certainly paid off and it was enough to give us an excellent score.  What we didn't realize was that being first in class so many times also made us overall winners.  When the results were announced, I think we were all a bit shocked, as we had assumed that Sommarvind had repeated their 2011 win.

I've already booked a place on next year's raid.  I'm hoping that with a bit more wind, we can enjoy the scenery and expend fewer calories. Whether I can persuade my excellent crew to share my vision after this year's experience is another matter....

[Jonathan Stuart]

Here is another set of photos from SC2013, including a good number of BR/BRe pics:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shricthism/sets/72157633881518594/

Further to what Graham wrote above, I would love to say that he won solely because of a greater willingness to row and by having more rowers in his crew. However, when the wind did blow he also out-sailed us. Well, on Loch Oich we were getting close until Mallory was unfairly given a 360 penalty, but on Loch Ness and elsewhere Turaco had this annoying habit of pulling away and grudgingly we may have to admit that this was down to better sailing!

There's always next year, so it looks like I need to get back in to training to make my oars bend even further and improve the sailing techniques...

[Graham W]

I did an experiment with a temperamental GoPro camera mounted on my mizzen mast for the Loch Oich race, which was sailing only.  One photo a minute for nearly two hours before the battery ran out https://www.icloud.com/photostream/#A45ON9t3fpt4d  Double click on any photo, wait a bit and it should come up in high definition.

Several other boats come into view at various stages, including close encounters with Feadhanach half way through and Ristie (BR20) towards the end.  There's also a point towards the end where we barely move for about 15 minutes.  Unfortunately, the camera died before a slo-mo multi-vessel pile-up right in front of us and before the windy finish.

I also have an unpublished sequence of the "sailing" race on Loch Lochy.  It shows three rain-soaked individuals rowing and rowing and then doing some more rowing.

[Graham W]

John Mac's photos are now up http://albums.phanfare.com/isolated/f1WpjQ01/1/6095724

[Graham W]

I've added some more pictures to the gallery http://www.swallowyachtsassociation.org/?page_id=449&album=4&gallery=12