30ft Sagitta catamaran in Falmouth triangle race 2026

The 30ft Sagitta catamaran was designed as a performance cruiser, or cruiser/racer if you prefer. So throughout it's 34 year life we have raced it, while it's also been cruised far and wide (currently the furthest it's sailed was to Trieste in Italy) Despite some terrible weather so far this year we have already had several short cruises and also had success in a few coastal races. The first of these was the "Falmouth Triangle" race, the traditional season opener in Plymouth. We first raced it 40 years ago in our Banshee catamaran when we were the fastest multihull and beat all but one monohull round the course. But times move on and Sagitta is now almost the slowest MOCRA rated multihull. Many local boats are 40% faster, which means we rarely see them after the race starts. This years triangle was no exception. There were 14 multihull entries, about a 1/3rd of the fleet, the first leg is roughly 40 miles - from Plymouth to Falmouth. Even under spinnaker and with 4 experienced crew on board, we soon dropped back, with the leaders out of sight ahead. Actually, since it was a misty day that turned to heavy rain for the last 3 hours, that wasn't surprising! Had we been cruising I'm sure we'd have all sat inside and sailed under autopilot. But as it was we got very wet and a bit bored sailing all alone in the murk. So imagine our surprise, as we neared Falmouth, to see more and more boats appearing only just ahead! Some should have finished literally hours earlier, so not unexpectedly, when we arrived we learnt we had won the first leg on handicap. Sadly that success wasn't repeated on the next two legs. The race to Fowey, about 20 miles east of Falmouth, was a light wind beat, but unfortunately we were unable to use our masthead screecher due to halyard problems. So we finished 5th. Once in Fowey Peter went up the mast to, temporarily, sort it out. As he's only 25 he doesn't really need a bosun chair - he just monkeys up the forestay. Which sure makes it easier for the winching crew! By now the sun had come out and we had another light wind beat back to Plymouth. We made a real lash up of twin barber-haulers for the screecher, but we now know how to set it properly. Even so, it wasn't too successful, another 5th, mainly because we couldn't really agree on tactics and in the end made too many compromises. So we came third overall.