Friday 19th June 2009
JV and I arrived in the Hamble on Friday afternoon after an expedition across Bodmin more to avoid a road closure on the A30. Glad Tim wasn't there to see the lanes we transversed - VERY NARROW. By 17.00hrs we were in the Hamble and the boat was rigged and ready for launching. Tim and John arrived and the boat was launched and put into her berth in the Marina. Thanks to Hamble Point Marina for being so accommodating and generally helpful.
Saturday 20th June 2009
04.00 I awoke and then couldn't sleep again. I went to the kitchen and sparked up the laptop to get weather updates. The best update was looking out the window. Raining! Oh dear, not so good. Forecast NW3, WNW4 followed by W4.
05.00 we were all up and after breakfast we headed down to the boat. Thankfully the rain eased and we set off for the Island. We put on the little 2HP Tomatsu outboard and motor sailed over to the waiting area SE of the start line. After a slight altercation in a busy area we lost the outboard over the stern. To be fair it carried on running despite being 3ft under water. Oh dear! Tim rescued it and stowed it below and we were then ten minutes from the gun and allowed to enter the start area.
07.40 The ten minute signal was given. No sign of any other Melges at the Squadron end. ?? Had we picked the right end? There were a couple of 1720's around and a number of Etchells but options were commited and we set up for the Gun.
08.50 Off we go on our set strategy of taking the least tide close to the shore on the left of the track. The tide was 1.5 knots down the channel, but a little less inshore with the possibility of a favourable back eddy before the tide turned. Great start and amongst the front runners of the Sportsboat fleet. All the other Melges had stuck together nearer the pin end but they were not so well place as us and it wasn't until the convergence at Hurst Point that positions became clearer. We were definately the front Melges and only one Etchells was sticking with us.
We made good ground and at this point the IRC1 yachts were only just catching up to us. We picked our line into the Needles inner channel and sailed through - no bumps so far! Up with the kite and off we go. Gybing into shore to avoid maximum tide and keeping the distance to a minimum. Towards St Catherines the wind kicked in and we managed to start planing at last. Up to a maximum of 18 knots on the dial we took all the IRC yachts that had passed us earlier. JV trimming the kite and putting in 20/30 Gybes. All the Sportsboats behind us at last. At this point we were aware of two Melges on our tail. Red kite (Risky Business) and Pink Kite (Filska) chasing hard. Risky looking the most threatening and at some points we could see the whites of their eyes.
Then there was a huge wind shift ahead spotted by Tim. John was on the helm and he made a blinding tactical call and drove the boat around twenty boats staying in the new wind field. We made great ground and lost sight of the other Sportsboats. In free air we made our way to Benbridge Ledge bouy. Now it was our turn to get some bad luck. We rounded the bouy in adverse tide and the wind just dropped out. We sat and watched the fleet sail back up to us. Nothing we could do. We could now see 3 Melges. Pink kite, White kite and Red kite rounding the bouy only a matter of metres behind us.
John spotted some wind inshore and he said we should go towards it. This paid off and we eventually got sailing again in a new wind field coming back from the West. We got on a beat and below us was the White kite of Crazeology. Now we had a race on. We kept inshore and had pace over them but heading towards the outer nav mark of Rye sands we scraped the bottom and this took a few minutes to work around. Crazeology taking the advantage and getting in front. Then followed a close tacking match up to the finish off Cowes and we didn't grind them out after taking dirt from a Trimaran and the IRC1 fleet eventually catching up to us again. They all headed to the northern finish line while we went up to the south line, in so doing the didn't sail over Crazy - Luck of the draw I guess. Thanks to that we did't make any ground on Crazy before the finish.
Our finish time was 17:26:22. An elapsed time of 9:36:22. With a corrected time of 9:06:24. This was 2.5 minutes behind Crazy. Very close indeed after such a long and varied race. All conditions, all wind angles and all differing seas.
Interesting facts about our performance: -
2nd Melges to finish
6th Sportsboat to finish
79th boat to cross the line out of 1735 boats
Elapsed time within the top 100 boats
1 1/2 hours behind Super Maxi Leopard of London (110 feet)
Not bad for a 24 foot Sportsboat!!
You can see the full results at www.roundtheisland.org.uk
Luckily for us the outboard started after it's swim in the sea and we were able to get the boat onto the trailer and packed up for the journey home. All in all a very good event, and altnhough not typical Melges sailing it showed we had good boat speed, strategy and teamwork. Luckily for Crazy we had last years sails on so they had better watch out at the Nationals when we put the Gucci rags on! See you there boys.
Thanks to Ian and Jo at the Farthings in Hamble for making us most welcome, and especially for the very early morning bacon sandwiches. By far the best B and B in the Hamble!
