Weymouth
Sailing
Club

The Kenion trophy being sailed tomorrow (27 July) has a particular place in my yachting calendar, as it was on ‘White Nothe’, Hugh Kenion’s locally-built Buchanan Seaspray launched in 1962, that I did my first keelboat sailing, along with Keith Sullivan, Keith Bird, Mick Floyd and other early crew members.

Two WSC boats took part in the Round the Island Race this year – Arcsine, skippered by Kathy Claydon and Jo90, skippered by Richard Woof. Arcsine was crewed by Charlotte Weaver, Andi Heyting, Nathan Gray and Rocco and Thomas Franco. They had their longest race ever, taking 13 hours. Only 250 out of the 1250 starters finished.

Sailing in company is a good way of taking the stress out of a Channel crossing, especially if you’re doing it for the first time. There is nothing to beat the feeling of the open sea as you get clear of the land, except perhaps the sense of achievement of having made a good landfall with the tide in your favour, as you drift up the coast in the sunshine towards your destination.

If you’re thinking of joining the Solstice rally this year, I’d be grateful if you could let me know as soon as you can, so that I have an idea of numbers for the winetasting, etc.

Steve Fraser
Aliya

You could tell the weekend was going well from the singing coming from the cockpit of 'Les Rapetous' from Granville; sailing hard seems to come as naturally as partying hard to the French, though WSC was ably represented, in the former if not the latter, by Kathy Claydon and her crew on 'Arcsine'– Mike, Charlotte, Pat, Kirsty and Andy. Well done to them, and to the crew of 'Effusion', who decided not to risk their rig in those conditions, but still got in on Sunday morning after the wind had dropped a bit.