FCS Fastnet Team Prepares for Cervantes Trophy Race

With their Sea Survival and ISAF courses under their belts just before Easter, the First Class Sailing crew held their first training weekend aboard Challenger 3 in preparation for the Cervantes Trophy Race.

This race to Le Harve is organised by the Royal Ocean Racing Club in association with the Société des Régates and the Royal Yacht Squadron. It is one of the warm-ups for the Fastnet and helps get everyone in the right mental attitude and used to working together in racing conditions.

The FCS crew will join the yacht in Portsmouth on Friday evening and start the race early on Saturday morning. The passage back to Portsmouth will be on Bank Holiday Monday.

Skipper’s Training Report

Saturday: Challenger 3 arrived at Cowes Yacht Haven 18:45 – Good days training. Some spinny drama at the end as we were faced with a massive 80-degree wind shift and had to do a rapid drop as the gybe took us directly into Lepe Beach.

Drop went well and lots of good experience and lessons learnt. Final drop was in 6m but shelving fast. Initially, we held the kite with the wrong pole for a while but had to gybe back into the beach for the drop.

Headsail changes (Bare Headed and Racing), Reefs and Shake outs, MOB (didn’t do planned MOB under kite), Tacks and Gybes, Demo of accidental gybe, and Preventer. All good and lots of enthusiasm by the crew.

Sunday: Departure Cowes and Passage Plan – Departing Cowes 10:00, plan to float towards Portsmouth trying to fill in the training gaps and have another go at getting the Spinnaker up and down again.

Crew all good, although we will have to do some more in port training as they all retired to bed early last night…

Ricky Chalmers
Skipper
Challenger 3

If you are keen to race in the next Rolex Fastnet you can find out more details on this web page.

Posted by: First Class Sailing