* More J/111 stuff- Paul Heys' account on the next "huge" day of sailing at Cowes Week on the J/111 JENGA VII-
"Big Wednesday at Cowes was followed by.....extremely large Thursday.
Having had a full day of high speed sailing on the Wednesday, Thursday
brought even more wind. Whilst most of the smaller boats were sent to
the relative shelter of the Eastern Solent, the bigger IRC classes were
sent West to Hurst Castle .The wind at the start was over 20 so the boats at the front of the fleet were set up with #3's and full mains. The first leg was a very one sided beat, the J122 Jinja was first boat onto port and having judged the layline to perfection was first to the the Raymarine buoy, which was a passing mark on the way to the windward mark at Hurst castle, some 7 miles further. The strong west running tide flushed the fleet down the Solent with an arrival order at Hurst of Jinja, J111 Shmokin Joe and J111 Jenga7. Once again the lightweight J 111’s had beaten most of the the larger, heavier boats to the Windward mark.
Slow spi sets by the leaders allowed Jenga to jump into the fray and an epic downwind battle commenced between the two J 111’s. Sailing perhaps a 100 metres apart with Shmokin’ Joe trying to maintain a slender lead the two boats flew along at a constant speed in excess of 20 knots for half the width of the Solent.
Jenga was first to gybe back into shallower water and took the lead only to lose it on the next gybe.
In deference to the difficulties encountered by the foredeck crews, both boats opted to sail with jibs up down wind, the disadvantage of having the jib set is that it is extremely difficult to refill the spinnaker after the gybe, without over pressing the boat. To be languishing at a mere 12 knots of boat speed trying to refill the spinnaker when you opposition is at mach 2 means that the lead yo-yoed between the two boats.
Having arrived at Salt Mead we went back on the wind for a very close fetch of 2 miles, this was followed by a down wind blast towards Cowes . When the wind strength was 22 we were sailing at 14 knots of speed when it was blowing 30+ we were sailing at 19-22 knots, so finding and staying in pressure and executing the gybes was key. On Jenga we had a particularly bad gybe with a big wrap in the kite, this looked like it might cost us the win. However it was not yet over as we gybed on the port layline, Shmokin’ Joe gybed on the starboard layline and wrapped their kite. For the second day running this resulted in them dropping the kite and then trawling.
Jenga led to the finish and as yesterday the finishing order was the three J111’s followed by the J 122!
Upon examining the results we discovered that having sailed the same course our elapsed time was faster than all of the class 1 boats which included a King 40, a Grand Soleil 46 and a couple of Ker’s. Had we been scored against this fleet the J 111’s would have won by 20 minutes on corrected time."
