We were lucky enough to book Lutine for the weekend at the end of Cowes Week, with Paul May as skipper and a crew of 8 Oxted Offshore members. Lutine was carrying her full racing sail wardrobe, so an exciting weekend beckoned, especially when a low developed off the Scottish coast on Friday and delivered lively winds all weekend! Peter Puttock takes up the story:
The Oxted Offshore Octet with skipper
Slap in the middle of a much-welcome British heat wave, eight Oxted Offshore members boarded Lloyds Yacht Club’s X55 racing yacht – Lutine – for an almost perfect weekend’s sailing on 30 June and 1 July 2018.
Lutine is built for speed. Whilst two foot longer than her predecessor – a Swan 53 – the current Lutine is 30% lighter. How? Modern yacht designs use a sandwich construction to save weight, with solid laminate used in areas requiring extra strength. In addition the X55 has a carbon fibre rig, with a strength to weight ratio far outperforming a conventional mast. It all adds up to be a real thoroughbred.
Have you ever thought you’d like to try offshore sailing but don’t know where to start? You’re in the right place!
To give you a real, hands-on feel of what sailing is all about – and maybe set you off on a whole new adventure – Oxted Offshore Sailing Club will be hosting a small number of Sailing Experience Days in the Solent during the autumn of this year and Spring 2018.
The Oxted Offshore Annual Dinner 2018 was held at Tandridge Golf Club (with grateful thanks to Bob Perry) on Saturday 24 March. 40 members and guests attended and a great time was had by all.
The 2015 trip to the British Virgin Islands was a great success and many of the 21 members who went on the trip have asked about visiting the Caribbean again.
After some discussion we have now finalised a ten day flotilla to the Grenadines starting in Saint Vincent on January 12th 2019 and ending in Grenada on January 22nd.
First out the blocks for this season’s sailing calendar is the traditional Spring Rally and Rose Bowl Challenge which I’m proposing should be to Poole again. This gives a decent passage for the race on Saturday and plenty of options for a good night out in Poole.
We only mustered enough interest in the autumn rally weekend to charter one boat, so the planned ‘Points Makes Prizes’ challenge was postposed until next year. But the nine on board were up for a last sail of the season and we met up at Hamble Point marina on the evening of Friday 6 October and boarded Reunion, a very spacious 46ft Bavaria cruiser. Our crew comprised Jeremy and Catherine, Stuart and Mags, Richard Aust, Kevin Ludbrook, Jeanne Frazer plus Fran and myself.
Here in lies the story of the intrepid adventures of Oxted Offshore in Turkey September 2017.
Arrived in Gocek, Thursday 14th September 2017 to be informed that our Yacht will not be delivered to Gocek due to some problem, however the charter company has offered to send a minibus to pick us up on Saturday and take us to Bodrum, a trip that takes 3 hours. This upsets our plans somewhat as we were due to meet up with two other OXO yachts; on the upside our new passage plan sailing from Bodrum back to Gocek will be very interesting.
On Friday 18 August 15 members of Oxted Offshore Sailing Club visited the Dover Coastguard Operations Centre. We were given an incredibly interesting insight to the work undertaken at Dover, not just in co-ordinating search and rescue services for vessels in trouble but also in monitoring our coastline and some 170 commercial vessels that enter or pass through in one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world every day.
An Aerial View of Dover Coastguard, built on the site of Langdon Battery at the top of the White Cliffs