One More Knot's Racing Summary

In most of of our races, we have recorded our GPS tracks and they are avialable in animated GPS replays here, or with (slower) performance analysis here.

2018

Portsmouth Sunsail Regatta: One More Knot 2nd in Club Class

The spring series started well, with a win, but then got significantly worse, eventually finishing the last day of racing with 2 lasts. A 2nd in the middle of the series was the only other thing worth mentioning. Not our best, but in part due to the light airs and strong tide leading to a couple of howler decisions by the skipper in desparation on the last day. In hindsight, we still were fastest in class on the water in 6 of 10 races, but clearly not by enough. The handicaps have been tweaked this series. I hope they continue to be tweaked every series (maybe from the NHC). We have been starting in Div 1 (faster boats) while the rest of our class competitors have been starting in Div 2. We didn't really work out where our performance had gone, although the handicaps have moved around a bit. End result, 5th from 10 in the series.

We entered the Portsmouth Regatta for the first time this year. 5 races in light airs over 2 days was incredibly intense apart from an extended period in race 3 when the wind dropped to 2 knots for an hour. Starting and finishing well with wins, the middle 3 races were 3rds.

Generally the races were windward - leeward sausages, with a leeward gate, all gone a bit America's cup. It was fab! The first race had a short 2 lap course set in about 5 knots of breeze, however by the time our start came around the wind was upto 9 knots and the the boats flew up and down the short track. 2 laps 30 minutes saw frantic activity on deck and below - kite speed packing! Everyone enjoyed the racing and free beer in the Royal Albert Yacht Club. At the end of the regatta, the Club class results were incredibly tight.

Top three boats were Hobo, One More Knot and then Maggie May, all Portsmouth Parhelion regulars. Hobo won by a single point, significantly pipping One More Knot by just 2 seconds in race 4. Maggie May had the same points as One More Knot.

The Round the Island race is next, 7th July. The schedule is:

2017

One More Knot wins Portsmouth Parhelion Spring Series

The Parhelion spring series got off to a windy start, with one race getting cancelled due to the conditions, with One More Knot claiming 2nd place behind Easy Tiger 2 on each fo the first 3 races. The following weekend presented a tidal opportunity that One More Knot was happy to take, to claim two very strong and convincing wins. More second places left One More Knot at the top of the series going into the final race day. Going into the final day, two boats, Maggie May and Easy Tiger 2 could also win the series. Maggie May won the first of the 2 races to keep here chances alive, but One More Knot won the final race to secure a victory in the Portsmouth Parhelion Club Class Series.

It was good to race the RTI once again on OMK. We claimed 4th in class, racing against now familiar competition. We've been doing this a while and we expect top 5! Scary.

The autumn series was slightly frustrating. Amazing consistency, 4 wins and 5 seconds from 9 races was still only enough for 2nd in class just behind Easy Tiger II. The wins came from lighter days, typical 10 knots or less. We were very pleased with our performance. On the stronger wind days, 15-25 knots, Easy Tiger sailed much better but we still pipped them on the water in all but one. However, with the boats at hull speeds and we just couldn't overturn the handicap differential.

2016

Having finished last year on top form, we weren't sure how this year would turn out. We need new anti-fouling, so a scrub in the sealift to start the spring series clean should have helped. Our sailing was generally clean and tidy, but a couple of equipment issues meant visits to the top of the mast and the results weren't quite there. For most of the series we were sitting in a comfortable 2nd place, mainly due to the inconsistency of the other crews. Maggie May became runaway leader with some top class sailing. On the final day of racing, we needed a decent result but a #2 headsail failure was part of a perfect storm set of conditions that bumped us out of the the silverware and down to 4th in the Portsmouth Parhelion Spring Series.

Thoughts turned to the Round the Island race. The maintenance programme included taking the mast down to fix the broken flicker and re-antifouling in the sealift just before the RTI. Best laid plans were shattered after the mast was unstepped. A 3cm crack in the mast just above the forestay means a new mast, which won't be available in time for the RTI. So with heavy heart we will have to withdraw from the RTI, unable to defend our class win and an attempt to keep the Portsmouth Sailing Club's trophy for fastest PSC boat in the RTI, Fortunately, the insurance appears to be taking most of the financial pain.

The first days racing in the Portsmouth Parhelion Autumn Series was also the Portsmouth Regatta. We had good results recording a 1st and 2nd in the Parhelion series, also scoring 3rd and 2nd in the Portsmouth Regatta to claim a Regatta 2nd place in club class. Hobo and Just In time provided stiff competition throughout rest of the Parhelion series, keeping OMK from the best places until the last day of racing to record when we were able to record a double win to salvage 2nd place overall, behind Hobo.

2015

One More Knot wins class 5B in the Round the Island race.
One More Knot wins Portsmouth Sailing Club's award for fastest club boat in the Round the Island Race
One More Knot wins 2015 Portsmouth Sailing Club's Parhelion Autumn Series

After a poor year last year, we were hoping things would work out better. Following a slow start in the Parhelion spring series, we recovered to win 3 of the last five races, to claim 2nd place in the series. Much better.

On to the Round the Island race, following a visit to the SeaLift for a scub on Thursday, practice on Friday, we raced on Saturday. An exciting near 8 hours of full on racing, always at the top of our class, we could see our hottest competition in a nip and tuck race. Beam on beam at Ryde with a boat that we gave a small amount of time, we knew we weren't winning. By the time we got around Castle Point and onto the finish, we weren't sure if we had done enough.

As the results trickled in, we realised that we had at last done it. A class win in the Round the Island Race.

Onto the Autumn series, a confusing first day with the Portsmouth Regatta, also counting for the Parhelion series. OCS wasn't the best way to start a series, but 5 wins in the remaining races secured the class win from a very competitive Maggie May by just one point.

During the presentations following the autumn series at the Portsmouth Sailing Club, we were also awarded the trophy for the fastest PSC boat in the Round the Island Race.

2014

One More Knot managed to complete the year without winning a single race. The year comprised 15 races in the Parhelion Spring and Autumn series plus the Round the Island race. We managed to claim 4 second place finishes and retired in an almost windless Round the Island race. Motoring along the south of the island. we couldn't believe how many people were swimming off the back of their boats in 3 knots of tide. At least we had a great dinner in the Castle Tavern in Gosport.

Possibly our least effective season for ages.

2013

A year full of 2nd places and too fast for the Round the Island race.

One More Knot is a man down.
On 17th April, Kevan Quinn, navigator and well respected member of the crew for 4 years, lost his fight against cancer.
A sad sad day for us. Kevan, you'll be missed and in our thoughts. It's difficult to lose a friend of nearly 30 years.
Why is it always the good guys? He was part of the crew that discarded a 1st place!

2013 Round the Island Race: One More Knot was too fast. Sadly, we were about 4 seconds early on the start which lumped us with a 5% penalty, amounting to about 25 minutes. Officially, we rounded the island 18th in class, but this include the penalty. In practice, our lap of the island was about 6th fastest in our class which was very repectable given the conditions we mainly reaching with enough wind to get everyone up to hull speed. The crew worked very hard all the way around, and its fair to say they were .... err ... quite tired by the end of it.

One More Knot finshed 2nd in the Portsmouth Parhelion spring series after a hard fought battle. The series had 6 different winners. Easy Tiger 2 pipped One More Knot by a point. One More Knot won 2 races.

One More Knot finshed 2nd in the Portsmouth Parhelion again in the autumn series after another a hard fought battle. Argo led the series home, in a series with strong winds, leaving OMK with a shredded main on 2 seperate days.

2013 Race reports:

2012

One More Knot 2nd in class in yet another windy Round the Island race

The 2012 Round the Island race turned out to be another windy affair. With our experienced crew on board we were able to approach the event with confidence in our ability to race hard all the way around. Analysis from last years race helped us to a record rounding time (7:43:07 elapsed, 7:44:30 corrected) to finish 2nd in class (44th overall), less than 2 minutes behind the class winners. This years RTI race report features video clips.

The Portsmouth sailing club provided exciting racing in both the Spring and Autumn Parhelion series.

The spring series yielded a 2nd in class for One More Knot, behind Electra, a locally well known quick boat. Despite Electra's dominance, One More Knot managed to claim 2 race wins. Our 150th race was celibrated with a win.

Despite leading the Autumn series from the first race, One More Knot managed to snatch defeat on the very last day, dropping into 2nd behind Muscadet de Havelet by only a single point. A magnificent effort, given that we shredded our main sail in one race, and then went on to both finish the race and compete in the next race using the 3rd reef. During the series we managed 4 class wins and line honours in all but one race.

We also used this year to raise money for our local lifeboat GAFIRS who assisted us during a double MOB incident in 2010

2012 Race reports:

2011

One More Knot 3rd in class in the very windy 2011 Round the Island race

The results catalogue 5 race wins and bag full of 2nd places. This gave us 2nd in both the spring and Autumn Parhelion series. We also claimed a very creditable 3rd in the RTI, the windy one! A good performance but not quite as successful as last year.

In the spring Portsmouth Parhelion Spring Series, we started perfectly with One More Knot winning the season opener. Strong competition from Muscadet De Havelet (Contessa 32) made life difficult for us. The wind was unco-operative for a couple of weekends, including the inaugural "Roy Pearce Memorial", a passage race to Wotton Creek. In the penultimate race of the series, One More Knot had a cracking start, being only 1 foot from the line at the gun and leading a joint classes fleet. Muscadet De Havelet denied One More Knot a 4th successive series win. With 2 race wins and loads of 2nds, One More Knot finished in a very creditable 2nd place, 3 points behind the leaders and 6 points clear of Just In Time in 3rd place.

In the Portsmouth Parhelion Autumn Series, One More Knot won the series opener again, followed by 2 other races in the series. In all of the other races, OMK finished 2nd, the most consistent results in the fleet. However, we lost out to Muscadet de Havelet again, to claim 2nd overall in the series. Looking back through the records, we took lines honours in all but one of the Spring and Autumn races.

This years JP Morgan Asset Management Round the Island Race was the windest that we had experienced, F5-6, gusting F7. Starting with 2 reefs in the main and the #3, OMK was quick off the line. Soon in clear water she was battling at the head of of class. We were reported as first of our start past Hamstead Buoy by the offical race blog. Flying the A3 out the back was exciting with the full main. The instruments showed peaks of 11.2 knots through the water and 35.4 knots of wind. The battle continued all the way to the line where One More Knot finish 3rd in class (we missed 2nd by 3 seconds). This year, we made some new personal records, 7hrs 48mins 24sec, 6th (of 146) in the group and 39th overall (of 976). A great result, but still no class win .... got to come back next year!

2011 Race reports:

2010

Roy Pearce (Symphony's skipper) passed away unexpectedly on 17th December. Roy, a close friend, was a well known and respected competitor at the Portsmouth Sailing Club. In his sailing career, he had claimed the Parhelion series title on many occasions. He will be greatly missed. Roy you will be in our thoughts.

One More Knot wins 2010 Portsmouth Sailing Club's Parhelion Autumn Series
One More Knot wins 2010 Portsmouth Sailing Club's Parhelion Spring Series

One More Knot managed a very good set of results for 2010.

The 2010 Portsmouth Parhelion Spring Series finished with a very close battle between One More Knot and Symphony. One More Knot (Elan 333) came out on top by a single point by winning the very last race of the series. Symphony (Elan 340) took 2nd place, skippered by the late Roy Pearce.

After a great start in the 2010 Round the Island race, One More Knot was first in class around the needles. The top of the class was level at St Cats but eventually One More Knot finished 4th in class. We have some great photos in the gallery from this years race.

One More Knot got off to a great start in the 2010 Portsmouth Parhelion Autumn Series. A big early lead was whittled away by Concerto but she never quite got to the top spot. Race 7 saw the fleet hit by a violent squall, where the wind went from under 10 knots to over 40 knots in less than a minute. The leaders all had their spinnakers up. One More Knot was knocked down, mast in the water for over a minute. We had 2 men overboard, sent a mayday and were assisted by the inshore lifeboat on an over eventful day. Fortunately, the crew were fine, if a bit battered, bruised, cold and wet. Read the race 7 report for full details. A big learning opportunity. With the big spinnaker shredded, the remainder of the series was a damage limitation excercise on the downwind legs. With some creativity, we managed to stay in front to win the series by 4 points.

2010 Race reports:

2009

One More Knot wins the 2009 Portsmouth Sailing Club's Parhelion Autumn Series
One More Knot 2nd in class in the Round the Island race

Following a pretty average perfomance in the Portsmouth Sailing Club Spring Series One More Knot's crew stepped up a gear.

In the Round the Island race, One More Knot recorded 2nd in class and 9th in her start group of 125 yachts. This years RTI had an entry of 1779 yachts of which 1566 ultimately completed the course in challanging and mixed conditions. The crew of OMK had come alive and each had 'owned' their part of the yacht. Boat speed and handling had improved considerably, as had our ability to keep One More Knot on her feet in windy conditions.

During the summer, sadly, the Elan Regatta was cancelled, however as One More Knot and her crew are the reigning champions it has allowed us to retain the magnificant trophies for a further year.

After some maintenance that had One More Knot out of the water in September, she was ready to attack the PSC Autumn Series. The series started well with a double header win, each race being won by a clear margin. The series continued extremely successfully with One More Knot recording 8 wins from 11 races. With 4 discards this allowed us the rare honour of discarding a win!

2009 Race reports:

2008

One More Knot : Elan Regatta champions

Wow, what a year! We won 5 races from 17 races in 2008. Actually, 5 wins from the last 8 starts sounds even better! Lets enjoy it while we can.

The season started with a hard fought Portsmouth Parhelion Spring Series . One More Knot pipped Just In Time for 3rd place overall on the count back by winning the final race. Total Obsession won the series easily. We have photos gallore .... see the report pages for the links.

Next, we claimed 6th in class on the Round the Island race . We had a very creditable 11th in group and 51st overall in ISC. To cap it all, it was windy which allowed us to clock our best time yet, 7 hours 52 minutes and 6 seconds for the rounding. This knocked over an hour off our personal best. We were also much closer to the class leaders than we had ever been before.

Premier Marinas organised the inaugural Elan Regatta. On Saturday 5th July, 3 races were run in windy conditions, F5-F7. One More Knot and her crew claimed a clean sweep, winning all three races. With increased winds on the Sunday, racing was cancelled (much to the relief of the participants). One More Knot was 1st overall for the Elan Regatta. Unbeaten plus fabulous trophies meant that this was a weekend to savour.

Following our summer holidays, we noticed than we had a broken strand on one of our D1's. After much deliberation, we took the mast off and replaced all of the standing rigging. We also took the opportunity to change to Dyform, plus change to a dyneema / vectran backstay with a flicker. And one other finishing touch was to add some protection to the steaming light, so that hopefully we don't knock it off the mast again.

We concluded the year with a partial Portsmouth Parhelion Autumn Series. We competed in 3 races, claiming a 2nd, 5th and thankfully another win in the final race of the series.

2007

We raced in the 6 weekend Parhelion  2007 Autumn series  to claim 4th spot.  The new spinnaker is making us much faster downwind.  We were denied 3rd place by Just In Time, on the count back .... again!

One More Knot completed the Round the Island Race this year to claim 9th place in class. With nearly 1800 entries, this was the largest 2nd largest ever entry list which produced a record number of finishers. We had an excellent start but we messed up the last leg a bit. Having said that, a top 10 finish isn't bad in a fleet this size. One More Knot's full round the island race report..

One More Knot was 5th in the 2007 Spring Parhelion Series. We shared the same points tally as Concerto in 4th, but were miles away from 3rd place. The rig had been taken down over the winter and put back with a shorter forestay. We failed to make allowances and change the sheeting positions until it happened by accident in the last race of the series. The series had 9 races in which 7 yachts raced in the Club class. The weather was fantastic throughout.

2006

One More Knot claimed 3rd place in the 2006 Autumn Parhelion series which was run by the Portsmouth Sailing Club. The series had 12 races which were run over 6 weeks on Saturday mornings in the eastern Solent. 9 boats entered the club class.

One More Knot completed this years difficult Round the Island race, recording 5th in class (from 48 starters). Over half of the yachts failed to finish, mainly due to very light winds and adverse tidal conditions for the later starters. As only 14 yachts in our class recorded a finish we are particularly proud of our achievement.

Last years 4th place set the bar much higher and we looked upon this year as a test to see if last years results was a fluke. A 5th place this year answered those questions.

Approximately 1600 boats raced in F0-F4 conditions.  This was our first race where we had used the anchor. Read all about is in our 2006 RTI race report.

2005

One More Knot has completed the 2005 Round the Island race recording 4th in class (from 40 finishers). One More Knot's 2005 RTI race report. We were quite excited about this result!  A great day's sailing with over 1600 boats racing in mixed F0-F5 conditions.

The Parhelion Spring series included 9 races over 5 weekends and has now concluded with One More Knot in 3rd place, from 8 in class. One More Knots 2005 Parhelion spring series race reports. The results included a race win, numerous line honours and a number of 2nd places. A major improvement. A good sign that the both the new equipment and the crew are coming together.

We also raced the autumn series, however we struggled to find a consistent crew and this showed in our results. Could do better ..... lets not say any more on this!

Pompey Parhelion Series
This is local race series at the eastern end of the the Solent, run by the Portsmouth Sailing Club.

2004

The Parhelion autumn series has now finished. One More Knots 2004 Parhelion autumn series race reports. One More Knot finished 6th out of 8 in the series (Club class).

Race report from the Round the Island Race, the famous round the Isle Of Wight race with about 1600 other boats. One More Knot finished 26 in class, from 60 finishers.

The Parhelion spring series, over 4 weekends of racing, and came 3rd in class. One More Knot's 2004 Parhelion spring series race reports . One More Knot completed all seven races, and came 3rd in the series.

Pompey Parhelion Series
This is local race series at the eastern end of the the Solent, run by the Portsmouth Sailing Club.

2003

Round the Island Race, the famous round the Isle Of Wight race with about 1600 other boats. One More Knot came 27th in class. One More Knot's 2003 RTI race report.