Snow and Sailing in Edinburgh

 

I awoke to a beautiful sight: the crags outside my window were adorned with the first Winter snow. I went out to Port Edgar for one of the few remaining winter races, and raced on Hardslog and Hence Forth, both very competitive boats although rigged somewhat differently.  Hence Forth was very well laid out, but some controls such as the outhaul and spinnaker pole track were in new locations for me. On both boats I worked on the foredeck and got plenty of spinnaker packing practice. Although the morning race started out very cold, the temperature seemed to rise into the low forties (F) and my fingers soon thawed.

I found that last week's race footage aboard Hussy had been uploaded to Youtube by Rachel.
Here's the link.

Blustery Day at Port Edgar, The Queen's Spice

I didn't get a sail in today, but I did cycle out to Port Edgar to watch the 2PM race. The winds were strong with 25 knot gusts, and I didn't see any brave souls flying spinnaker. I did get a chance to check out the catamaran fleet at Port Edgar and was impressed by some of the boats. They have a builder called Hurricane out here.

Port Edgar is the second club that I have sailed at so far. The first, called The Royal Forth Yacht Club gave me a chance to crew on a Scottish 707, a wide day sailer which is raced one design. I was lucky to get a great skipper on that day, and really enjoyed the close calls and control that they had over the boat.

Port Edgar is a larger club and is located close to Queensferry on the SW side of the Forth Bridges. It was apparently a destroyer base during WWII, and has very substantial and overbuilt facilities for the purpose that it is now serving. (IE, hosting sailboats!) It seems that the large tidal fluctuations (on the order of 20 ft) lead to some bottom scraping situations for some keel boat slips.

Because Port Edgar is about 10 miles away from where I stay, I've been struggling to find a streamlined route using the arcane bike paths. Here in Scotland, the paths are more frequented by dog walkers with kids than cyclists. That is fine, but most don't expect bikers to be coming at any speed. Signage is spotty, and in some places incorrect. Also, due to all of the construction, a good portion of the paths lead to a dead end, leaving one stranded in a construction site with only one way to go: back.

Hungry from my ride to Port Edgar, I decided to splurge at an Indian place called "The Queen's Spice".

There I ordered the Murgh Kabob with daal and rice. It was quite pricy (about 17 Pounds for lunch!) but the quantity of food prepared me for the ride back. Indian food here in the UK is more of a high-class affair than in the States, and I was woefully underdressed in my bike gear. Fortunately (or perhaps not so) for them, I was their only customer at the time, and had the place to myself.

On my ride back, I snapped some photos of the weather along a route where I once got lost at night. In the daylight I was able to better navigate and made it home much faster.