Three cruises have now been completed with three more remaining before prizes are presented and we return to more normal summer sailing with gentle zephyrs and hot sunshine from early morning until well into the evening. (You never know, you may also have to alter course to avoid low flying pigs.)

It is at this point of the series that things start to become interesting. Three cruises have to count for the overall placings and very few boats have completed in all cruises so far.To date eighteen boats have taken part with two boats, Pagan and Musyk, taking part in all of the cruises so far. The first cruise saw ten boats take part and the November and December cruises both had 12 boats taking part.

After three cruises Pagan is leading with 9 points and Musyk is in second place with 22 points. However three cruises count towards the prizes and five boats have completed two cruises and so will be discarding their DNC on the next cruise and so positions may change around considerably.

The first cruise was sailed at the beginning of October in hot sunshine with the finish at Lymington. For a cruise to the western Solent it really needs a HW Portsmouth close to midday when the westerly tide starts but with an easterly tide on the following morning to help boats that need to return to the eastern Solent on the Sunday. Unfortunately it is spring tides when high water occurs at midday at Portsmouth and it was a particularly big spring tide on the weekend in question. (The range was 4.6m; mean spring range at Portsmouth 3.9m).

The smaller yachts struggled to make it around the course and a number of yachts retired, although all managed to head down tide to Lymington. The winner in October was Charles Whittam in Juno; with Mike and Carol Gorvett in Arvika second; and Andrew Ormsby in Shearwater third. Roger Exwood in Pagan was the last boat to finish the cruise in fourth place, a commendable effort as Pagan is only 26 foot LOA.  The other six boats all retired.

After a week of continuous rain, the November Fast Cruise was also held in sunshine but again with strong tides just two days before the spring tide and with light winds. At least this time it was held in the eastern Solent, where the tides are weaker than the western Solent, finishing at Haslar marina in Portsmouth harbour. Even though most of the cruise was in sunshine, towards the end a dark cloud brought some rain and a squall and a windshift when most boats were flying spinnakers. Pagan was first in this cruise with Barrie Martin in Day at the Races second and Shearwater third.

The beginning of December saw heavy falls of snow over most of the country. (I was in Northern Ireland just before the Fast Cruise weekend where the overnight temperature was -17°C). Thankfully a thaw started on the Thursday evening just before the Fast cruise weekend. Even so, we were chartering a yacht that had the mainsheet and the jib furler running underneath the side decks and when we picked the boat up on Friday we found that both mainsheet and furler line were frozen solid. Luckily they both thawed before the Saturday. The tides were much gentler for this cruise but the wind died in the afternoon necessitating a shortening of the course. As is customary for December, the Fast Cruise finished at Cowes and all yachts headed up the Medina to the Folly for the evening meal (in fancy dress) and dancing on the tables. This cruise was won by Martyn Graham in Willow with Tim Bizzey in Storm Petrel second and Day at the Races third.

The next Fast Cruise, the fourth in the series takes place on the 22nd January, starting at Horse Elbow green buoy and finishing at Port Hamble. Further details are here.