Last weekend, Ann and I took the Falcon out for its first proper open at Lake Bala in Wales. The weather forecast the week before was a bit mixed, and suggested that it wouldn't be an ideal weekend for either sailing or camping. We actually ended up with great sailing on two of the three days, but I think attendance suffered a bit due to the forecast, with a mixed fleet of around 15, made up of F18s, Nacra/Inter 20s, a Nacra 6, 3 As, a Shadow and a few others.
On Saturday morning, Lake Bala was a 4 mile long mill pond, without a ripple in sight. After several postponements, the wind suddenly arrived just before 4pm and gave every impression that it was going to set in for the day. Unfortunately, after a mad rush to get on the water, the wind gave up and swung through 180 degrees half way through the start sequence, leaving us with a downwind drift to the first mark, and the rest of race being a lottery of holes and massive shifts.
Sunday morning looked like it would have the opposite problem: an overcast sky, and a strong wind blowing straight down the lake onto the exposed shore of the club left us thinking twice about going out. Once we got out there, we found the conditions to be more or less perfect - flat water, and a strong but pretty much steady wind. I was so excited that I managed to capsize on the first tack of the first race.
The next three races went rather better and gave us our first opportunity to see how the Falcon stacked up against the bigger boats. The answer: very well indeed, with some close racing with the F18s, two 20s and the Nacra 6. On the water we got a 2nd, a 1st and a 3rd, and I think these stood on handicap too, despite Phil on the Shadow finishing uncomfortably close behind in all races.
Monday saw similar conditions, although the 2nd and 3rd races saw some big lulls, with the wind intermittently dropping from 15 knots down to about 6 knots. We had trouble in the 2nd race, finding more of the 6 than the 15, and then running over our spinnaker sheets. We made up for it in the last race and after a very close race with the leading F18 we managed to finish with a 1st (on the water and on handicap).
We finished 2nd overall, behind Pete and Jess Findlay on an Infusion, and ahead of an F18 from Tresaith in 3rd, and Phil on the Shadow in 4th.
The Falcon attracted quite a lot of interest, especially after it became clear that we were giving the bigger boats a real run for their money on the water. We got nothing but compliments on the boat, both on the performance on the water, and on the build quality and setup (well, one of the F18 crews said, "I don't know what it is or where it came from, but it can go back there because it shouldn't be that fast", but we took that as a compliment).
We're still getting used to the boat and there's definitely scope for driving it harder downwind thanks to the additional bouyancy up front, but we're really happy with the performance and the results this weekend!
In two week's time I'll be doing Rutland on my own, so we'll see how it goes singlehanded.
Paul
