Day 4

FICKLE WINDS AND FLUCTUATING FORTUNES

Wednesday was to have been a day of round-the-harbour courses for most of the fleets racing in Poole Week. The Dolphins and Cornish Shrimpers tend to sail round-the-harbour courses anyway – none of this windward/leeward or triangle/sausage business for them – but the idea was to send the others (except the slow handicap fleet, perhaps) towards the green and pleasant land that lies to the south of Poole Harbour. ‘Green Island to starboard’ (or port) is in some of the courses, and if you leave Green Island to starboard (or port) it’s hard not to do the same with Brownsea and Furzey (they’re islands too, in case you’re not familiar with Poole Harbour).

The problem was that the wind gods were having a little tussle up in the sky. Eurus, the god of the east wind, had asserted his dominance early in the day and so the courses were set accordingly. What nobody had fully appreciated is that Zephyrus – he of the west wind – was going to play tug-of-war with Eurus and, for a time, match his strength. The result was that, at different times in different parts of the harbour, neither wind blew at all. Eventually Zephyrus won and ushered in a gentle westerly, but by that stage the racing had, to say the least, been rather disrupted.

While the ILCAs and Flying Fifteens in the Top Triangle were waiting for enough wind to start racing, most of the fleets sailing from the Parkstone Platform set off down the harbour en route to South Deep. It was all very gentle, beating against barely 5-6 knots of breeze and the faintest of flood tides. As ever, it was a question of whether to go right towards Brownsea or left towards the north shore of the harbour. On the whole, it was the right that paid.

The reward for negotiating the beat and reaching the east side of Brownsea Island was a sizeable patch of no wind. There was a bit of a bottleneck here as all the fleets compressed. The leading Wayfarer even caught up the last of the Darts, which had started 10 minutes earlier. A lot of boats bobbed up and down off Brownsea Castle, going nowhere fast and being urged by one of the harbour’s pilot boats to ‘keep to the edge of the channel’ as a large freighter was on its way out. 

Just past the castle, by the entrance to South Deep, the lightest of breezes was enough to get kites filling on a shy reach towards Amy Group, one of Parkstone’s race marks, where a RIB was waiting as a finish boat. At least that’s how it worked for those who finished before about 15:20. After that was a virtual calm for a good 15-20 minutes as a group of (mostly) XODs and RS200s drifted inch by inch across the line.

Thankfully, the wind gods’ little game came to a conclusion after that and a gentle westerly filled in to help everyone back down South Deep and towards Brownsea Castle, where a different wind hole lay in wait. The beat back towards the Parkstone platform was worthwhile, however, because a second race was on offer. For most, it was a relatively short windward/leeward in a wind that started at 10-12 knots and gradually eased. 

As for the Top Triangle fleets – well, when the easterly that had been blowing earlier in the day finally deigned to return some time after the scheduled start time for the first race, they set off on a beat down the harbour. Then, of course, the wind shut off before coming in from the opposite direction, turning the beat into a run. The race was finished at Glovers buoy, between the north-east corner of Brownsea and the Lilliput shore, with dozens of ILCAs and Flying Fifteens crossing the line together. That wasn’t how it was supposed to work – but sometimes that’s yacht racing for you.

In terms of results, some new leaders have emerged including Rob Jackson in the ILCA 6s and Peter Loretto in the RS200s, both of whom have been close to the front all week. Others less close to the front scored good results not because of 180° wind-shifts working in their favour but simply by going the right way, like Trevor Card, who came 2nd in the Wayfarers’ second race to leave most of the regular front-runners in his wake.

It’s tight at the top in many of the fleets. We can only hope that Eurus and Zephyrus have had their fun and games for now and will allow competition in Poole Week to continue in conditions marginally more predictable than they were on Wednesday.