10th June 2005 - Povoa to Leixeos
Posted at 8:18 AM, Saturday, June 11, 2005
Swagman Log –
Rally
This promised to be a great short sail of 15 miles. Not.
After a great start off the outer mole of the harbour directly into a F3 breeze, we found ourselves shadowed off the line by XII Bar Blues.
As she carried bigger headsails than us there was very little speed differential in the light airs so we tried all we could to loose her. We anticipated that the breeze would back through the east and go light, and eventually end up building again behind us.
So if we were going to win this leg we needed to get close into to the beach and try and sneak away on any light easterly that may arrive. It never did.
XII Bar stuck to us despite trying to encourage her to go offshore. We both ended up when the wind dropped, absolutely stationery ¼ mile off the coast.
It took some 90 minutes for the breeze to return and we’d fortunately got it wrong – it came from the west and we were better placed and so started moving before XII Bar. Oh-so-slowly we saw 0.02 knots grow to a staggering 4.5 knots as we both ran down the coast to the finish off Leixeos harbour.
By good fortune we beat them over that line by 30 minutes – giving us a 3rd placing behind two other yachts who had both motored.
So our rally tally so far is one first, one second and now one third.