Royal Air Force Yacht Club

Well pleased with our results on Shropshire Lady II my16 year old Bavaria 350.  We were inGroup 6, came 46 out of 250.

Overall 288 out of 1875 boats

12th in our Division of 62.

Crew: Dave Lawrence Skipper, used to own MecSail and race their Sigma 38's and Beneteau 40.7. Two more guys and 6 girls.

I had just put new main and headsail on and earlier this year Symblasted the hull back to glass - so quite clean on the bottom, but that was in March.

There wasn't one moments let up all the way round the island.  It was constantly "in on the main" "out", "ease" , "careful moving around the boat" and "everyone on the rails, heads out".   We broke a winch handle (now have 3 stainless steel ones)  trying to get the genoa as tight as we could each time so had to carry on with one.  We had Ricardo on bows allthe way calling. Didnt use spinnaker.  We admittedly took it in turns on the helm as one or two were feeling sick and one hardy girl sailor actually was.  I think none of us felt 100% when we got round The Needles with the movement of the wind and waves. We had one near collision where we lost valuable time.  Next slowing up incident , the traveller came out of its run but we managed to fix and get back in.  One of the traveller blocks stuck constantly when we tacked so had trouble getting it across afterwards due to pressure of the wind. (now sorted)

We all had our jobs throughout and mostly stuck to them.  Usual chaos at the finish with no water and had to do 6 quick tacks in succession to get over finish line.

Just in case you want to print a few comments of our crew after we got the results, then read below!

Cheers Robbie

Kathy

Elaine " -i rather feel i was more use as ballast but it was great fun and everyone is dazzled by our result including myself"

Liz "Thanks to crew and skip for a great time and a fantastic result and I  think my bruises  run to triple figures!"


Simon "Quite right Dave and Richard, congratulations and thank you
too
everyone. I think that the result is absolutely fantastic.
To be in the
top 15% of entries is amazing.

Thanks to everyone for putting up with me and especially
Kathy and shropshire Lady

Zimber "A great weekend all roundI am totally fabricating the results, the race, the danger,
the
excitement to anybody that will listen. Working on the
fact that hardly
anybody knew anything about sailing and don't even know the
front of the boat
from the back (um I mean the bow from the stern...). Tess
and I
celebrated our win with absolute venganace on Sunday and
got totally
dwunk as skunks in G'Ford. 



Ricardo " Thank you to all for a great race. 
Hi crewmates,
RIR2008.
Got round
Got pics
Got bruises
Got pissed
Great boat
Great skipper
Great sailing
Great memories of you all
3 cheers for Kathy & Shropshire Lady
Luv Rick x "

Dave Lawrence wrote: (Skipper)

Dear all

Well done to you all for surviving the RIR ordeal and
putting such a
magnificent effort in with such difficult conditions. All
the companies
and skippers I have spoken to today have had both minor and
major
problems !!!! It was a lot more hairy than it looked and
what a
fantastic result -- many people have sent their congrats !



A big thanks to Kathy for organising it all and having the
boat in such
good shape - the new sails were in great shape as shown by
our result.



If you have any pics please send them to me and I will put
a montage
together.



Going back to sleep now------



Love 



Dave xx  "