Hayling Ferry Sailing Club is a small, friendly club, superbly located at the western tip of Hayling Island. From our well equipped club house, our fleet of catamarans and monohulls enjoys some of the best sailing in the Solent and the south coast of England.
New members are always welcome whether you own a boat or not.
The Club has been informed of the sudden and unexpected passing of Clive Wright.
Clive was a keen, active and well-liked club member and was currently serving on the Club’s management committee.
Details of funeral arrangements will be made known to club members once they become available.
Well done to the 5 brave crews that ventured out today. Chimet and Cambermet both show sustained F5 with F6 gusts for the duration of the race which combined with significant swell in the Langstone channel to make for some spectacular sailing and fraught landings at the finish. Only 3 boats completed both legs. Richard and Justin completed a particularly rapid 2nd leg to take 1st place overall after placing second behind Steve and Jennie on the first leg. Of note were 3rd place finishers Kieron and Ben putting winter training to good use.
After a dramatic start to the season (Woody won the first race in his brand new boat), normal service was resumed last Sunday with Richard and Justin taking the win on a club SL16, closely followed by Clive W on his FX One.
Conditions were a bit lighter than forecast (F2-3) - but there was enough to complete 2 laps of inner, outer, wreck with a fairway finish in 2 hours or less.
A good start to the season with a few boats braving the chilly NNE wind. After an upwind start, the course was set to head toward the harbour to round the new "Mulberry" starboard channel marker before heading back out of the channel to the Fairway mark. 2 laps of Outer -> Inner -> Wreck followed, before a final upwind leg to the finish line. The wind was consistently F4-5 blowing offshore with the inevitable wind shifts, gusts, and holes.
A very unpromising forecast may have put a few people off but 6 boats signed on for some light-wind short course racing on a glorious warm sunny day.
Some patience was required and the wait saw one boat drop out but eventually the first race commenced with a beach start at 13:10. From the club start line, the fleet headed for a triangle - sausage - triangle course around marks expertly laid off Fort Cumberland (and the nudist beach) by Rene and Felicity on the support boat.
Making the most of a full spring tide, a harbour pursuit race was the order of the day. Following a similar course to race 1 back in May, part of the challenge was finding the 3 course marks - Salterns, Rod, and North West Sinah - all channel marks making for a broad triangle in the widest part of the harbour. The downwind leg from NW Sinah to Salterns was the shortest and with Salterns to Rod being too beamy to hoist a kite, the course in theory favoured the 2 sail boats.
Lighter than expected winds called for a short inshore course to ensure the fleet didn't end up stranded out in the middle of the solent and so 2 race marks were laid beyond the outfall for a course of 5 sausage laps. On the whole it worked out well but a 180 degree wind-shift half way through the race, which was marked with a 5 lull minute followed by a unexpectedly strong gusts, proved challenging for all.
A decent F4-5 blowing from the west meant more chop than expected for a seafronts race, following (or attempting to follow) the traditional course upwind around Fairway to the "Castle" channel marker (just off Southsea Castle), downwind all the way to West Pole just off Chichester Harbour entrance, then upwind again around Fairway back to the club finish.
The long upwind slogs against short period chop were uncomfortable for some but downwind for the entire length of Southsea and Hayling seafronts was a blast for the spinnaker boats.
F4-5 forecast cross offshore (but mostly blowing straight up the solent from the west) and low-tide presented a good opportunity to run a 3 forts race following the traditional course of Horse Sand to starboard, Spitbank to port, No Man's Land to port, then passing Horse Sand to port on the return to the club finish line. We tend to think of this as a big race but even with limited chances to fly the kite, Richard and Charlie (F18) completed the race in just over 1 hour and 6 minutes.
