Earlier this month I was invited to take part in the annual Arrow Trophy, a sailing competition between ex pupils of Public Schools in the UK. The races were held in the Solent, so i travelled down to Portsmouth by bus nad met up with the the rest of the crew at Port Solent Marina.

The  boats, Benaeau 40 CR's were charted from SunSail and some  23 crews from different schools were involved. the check's and administration took some time and it was not  until the evening that we aer able to get underway and motor across to Cowes Yacht haven, our base for the competition. We were a mixed bunch from twenties  to sixties. Once in Cowes we went our to a pub for dinner and to work out who was doing what.. I ended up becoming the trimmer.

Saturday dawned with little wind so the start of racing was delayed, which allowed us a little time to work out the spinnaker drills with the youngsters of the fore deck crew. Throughout the  competition  the spinnaker proved to be our greatest challenge. we had good starts and upwind speed and then messed up going downwind, with twists in the spinnaker and slow deployments. After the days racing we examined our performance and realised that that no one was assigned to look after the spinnaker guy which was the cause of slow sets. Saturday we attended the Official dinner and watch the English rugby team being knocked out of the Rugby World Cup.

Sunday dawned with little wind and a few members of the crew suffering sore heads, but as the forecast predicted the wind continued to rise throughout the day. We faired much better with the spinnaker and had some reasonable results. Racing stopped at 1500 and then we beat back to Portsmouth in the rising wind.

Lessons to be learnt for the future, if we we want to win we need to find time to train in handling the spinnaker.