Chris Parker's Personal Blog – Flying, sailing and photography, mostly. And gadgets.
We had a magnificent weekend taking part in the Round The Island Race 2010. It’s the biggest sailing race in the world, and it takes place from Cowes to Cowes around the Isle of Wight.
1670 boats started the race, with the first batch off at 0500. We were sailing a Sunsail 37 and our group of 69 crossed the start line at 0520. We finished at 14:20:23 in 12th place and a great time was had by all.
Any sailing wizzes out there who can answer this?
I’m wondering whether I’m leaving it too late to tack, and thereby covering more ground.
(I posted this on posterous last week but hang-out was down so it didn’t appear here.)
22 September – our best day’s sailing – 39 miles from Bandol to Hyeres, all on the sail. Force 4 to 6 winds gave us 6 to 7 knots most of the time. Great fun!
The site’s back up after a few days’ offline. I don’t know whether it was hacked or whether my host fixed it, but something managed to bring it back up.
The sailing holiday’s over. We drove from Bormes-Les-Mimosas to Morzine, had a day there, then spent the following night in Beaune. Yesterday we drove up to Paris and found a lovely hotel, Le Petit Paris, in Saint Germain. Tonight we’ll be on the ferry back to Portsmouth and then it’s back to work 🙁
There are some new photos on Flickr, more here next week.
It’s still raining.
Today’s forecast was showers and Force 2 to 4. We decided to sail from Île de Porquerolles to Sanary, between Toulon and Marseille. Half an hour after slipping out of the harbour the rain started. There was a big, stationary, thunderstorm to the west of our track and we were catching the edge of its rain. A couple of hours later it was still raining and it didn’t make any sense to continue to Sanary so we diverted north to St Mandrier-sur-Mer, just south of Toulon.
We’re now in a café blogging, drinking pression, and staying dry for a change!
Saint-Mandrier-sur-Mer
France
It’s been raining for three days now. We’ve been told it’s the first rain here since May – it’s certainly making up for it.
After a windy night in Port Grimaud we decided to make a run for it back to Cavalaire-sur-Mer. It took three hours, and the weather wasn’t as bad as forecast, but the decision was sound as we’ve got a much more sheltered mooring in the marina here and it was blowing Force 7-8 last night.
So today is shopping, drying clothes and generally chilling. If it’s better tomorrow we’ll try for the island of Porquerolles.
Cavalaire-sur-Mer
France
Karen set off on her Day Skipper Course today. I was going to go sailing as well but my sailing got cancelled so I was on hand to record her departure.
