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2006 Hurricane 5.9 National Champions
Line Honors Round the Isle of Wight
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Line Honors - Round the Isle of Wight
UK's biggest Long Distance Race - 4th June 2005
Catching Up Downwind around the south side of the Island
Getting to the start line I was finishing my first renovation project and needed to do some racing to remind me why I was working so hard, I hadn’t sailed all season! So I called my Hurricane sailing friend Richie Furber and invited him to come and do the UK’s most competitive long distance race. Richie is a sports teacher at a school in Scotland and an ex-pro rugby player, just the ticket for a 60 mile race around the Isle of Wight! So we practiced for a couple of weekends too in preparation for the big day. On the day of the race my Canadian girlfriend Jacquie was watching from the Yacht Squadron in Cowes. She had asked how she would know which boat was us. Thanks to Lloyd and Kevin Turner we found the prefect answer in a Maple leaf sticker for the mainsail! Race Day 11am, what a sight! 80 catamarans on the start line in the Solent just off the Calshot shore, it was a cloudy, warm day with a light North westerly breeze. We made a poor start, struggling to get clear air in the big fleet as we headed west around the Island into a foul tide. We finally cleared our air from the melee of boats heading for the island shore but took too long to get out of the tide as we headed for Gurnard. We had given away 20 places in the process and needed to spot a shift or some breeze to get back into the race! I kept an eye on the compass looking for shifts as we tacked along the Newport shore. As we were on port tack heading away from the Island I could see that there was some extra breeze coming from Lymington. The local breeze was light and getting into the new breeze would mean crossing some strong foul tide. So I took another hitch back along the island shore whilst keeping and eye on the wind to see how it developed. When we tacked back I felt more confident about the stability of the new breeze and went for it. No one followed, which would mean that we would rapidly look very good or very foolish! Sure enough the closer we got to Lymington the stronger the breeze became, once I felt sure that we were far enough into it we tacked back toward the island and flew a hull well as we carried the breeze back towards Hurst narrows. Could we be back in the race? As we closed on the Needles and the infamous rocks all the Tornados and the Reg White Stealth 20 had already turned the corner, put there spinnakers up and disappeared into the now favourable tide! We followed suit and set the spinnaker as we too turned the corner. All of the F18s and slower boats were now behind us but we were easily 2 or 3 miles behind the leaders. We knew that we had pace downwind… the race was back on! With the wind direction now much more South Westerly on the south side of the Island we had a 30mile tight starboard spinnaker reach in prospect, this was where I expected Richie to come into his own. Sure enough we were electric downwind with Richie pumping his socks off! All of the other Tornados were running the new carbon mast, we were still on the trusty old aluminium version 30% heavier. We caught up nearly all of the leaders margin by the eastern end of the island, but had yet to pass a single boat! Just before the final turning mark at Hyde we spotted a header coming, quickly dumped the kite and almost immediately we pulled back both Grant and Adam Piggot on their Tornados right on the mark! We sneaked ahead by just a boat length or two, it was getting tight! As we tacked past the Forts into the Solent all of the leaders were within touching distance. Richard Allen (Tornado) and Jan DeVries(Stealth20) picked the Island shore whilst the Tornados of Kym Leat, Nick Barnes, Grant Piggot and Adam Piggot all took the mainland side with us. The tide was against us as I took the early gamble to cross the channel. The Island shore boats disappeared quickly, we had to forget about them and concentrate on winning our side of the final leg up the Solent, just Nick and Kym remained. I’d been sailing from a local club recently and felt the place to be was close into the shore on the mainland side out of the tide. As we made the dash across the foul tide we had 2 boats ahead and behind when we began to struggle for speed. The wind had picked up and we needed Richie on the trapeze but we quickly realized the mast rotation (critical to speed and pointing) had broken! Fortunately Richie spotted it, kept his cool and dealt with it by tying a few knots just in time as both Piggots closed in on us! We continued into the Portsmouth harbour mouth ducking the ferries and began short tacking along the shore. We were looking to attack Nick Barnes and Kym Leat whilst not giving the Piggots a chance to break through. Tack by tack as we came past Stokes Bay we finally overhauled Nick Barnes as he tacked a bit too far into the foul tide and set our sights on Kym, but he was still 300metres ahead with only a couple of miles left to go! As we came past Hillhead the finish line at Calshot was insight and Kym was still 100metres ahead there just wasn’t enough distance left to catch him. No other boats were in view, we just didn’t know if they were in the bar or on the water! Calshots finish line was less than 400m away in a dying breeze, we were on the shallows out of the tide but had to make a decision soon to tack across the foul tide as it ran out of Southampton water, if we tacked too soon we would end up in Cowes! Then it happened! We could see new breeze was coming from Fawley, the wind headed 45degrees (in our favour and picked up strongly). We seized our opportunity, tacked, bore away onto a reach and jumped onto the trapeze, I couldn’t believe it Kym hadn’t seen the shift, we just needed 20 or 30seconds to break through. We were screaming our heads off as we hit the front. Richie was pushing hard driving the bow in as far as he could. And in a minute it was over, we crossed the line… But where? A rib bristling with cameras flew towards us.. I couldn’t see any boats ashore.. I shouted to the rib ‘where did we finish’? ‘here’ came the reply… No No what position? ‘First’ came the reply!!!
copyright Bernard Ready 2007
copyright Bernard Ready 2007