Round the Island

What a great weekend. I'd never done the RTI before, and the thought of a 12 hour drifting match or a beat into half a gale for 6 hours was not appealing. But this year I think will probably go down as one of the better ones, at least for smaller boats. A friend invited me to sail on a Starlight 36, and did she go!

A great spinnaker run down to the Needles, then a long reach down to St Caths and a beat to the forts.Then a cracking reach to the line in close company.

Our corrected time was just under 8.5 hrs, and we would have done a lot lot better if we hadn't tried to take a shortcut inside the fort (against my advice). We lost about 10 mins I reckon. But a great day for the Folkboats - they were in our class and did they go! Nip and tuck all the way.

The radar saga is now at an end. I did in fact manage to fix the old one - bad connections in the scanner. Boy, is that Koden gear tough! In the meantime I managed to locate a used Furuno 821 - a great set, but only 2kw. So now I have two! :-)