An Old-School Maverick Fastnet (almost as long as the race...) Episode 1

31 augustus 2017 - Every two years it begins with pageantry and the sharp reports of bronze starting cannons, hundreds of colorful boats gliding gracefully on a Sunday summer morning, cheering spectators along the Cowes ..............

promenade, helicopters whump-whump-whumping overhead and film-crews crisscrossing the start area on fast rubber boats. Families and friends line gather along the ‘Castle’, waving goodbye, sending their loved ones off on an expedition or to war - or perhaps both.

Behind the show and bravado sailors confront their own fears and insecurities as they set out on this most iconic and challenging of all offshore classics – the ‘Everest’ of sailing -- the Fastnet Race. It is not the oldest race, nor at 600 miles the longest, but it ultimately envelops newcomers and veterans in its special history and tradition, its famous boats and legendary skippers, and in its tragedies and resilience.

Out of tragedy came many of the safety and training advancements that have saved scores of boats and lives. Over 350 boats readied behind the start line, each carrying a range of traditional and more advanced electronic safety equipment, every boat inspected and qualified. All crew have undergone first aid and offshore safety training, in addition to special drills and practice.

Two days before the start Maverick and crew were eager to start. As a Fastnet gift she sported a new OneSails mainsail, our much-loved three-year old mainsail now happily retired to delivery duty. Maverick rested in her berth, clean and dry, our training and qualification complete, but Ken Parsons still nursed a chest infection that proved troublesome in the Channel Race two weeks earlier. With strict qualifying requirements, including sufficient time together on the boat, a crew change appeared out of the question. On the other hand I suspected after a full year qualifying and readying Mav for this major race, Ken would try to ‘gut it out’.

With long-time Dutch co-skipper Raymond Roesink on family holiday in California, I had one other option – experienced doublehander Patrick ten Brincke filled in admirably earlier in the season in the #RORC North Sea Race, but was committed to the fully-crewed fellow Scheveningen boat ‘Plan B’.

After a series of e-mails and calls Patrick became our ‘Plan B’; the RORC committee approved his qualifications, and more importantly Frans Driessen, the skipper of Plan B, graciously agreed to let Patrick move to Maverick (and a dinner is in the offing). Our preparations took a new twist, as Patrick is over 2 meters tall (over 6’5”) but I learned during the North Sea Race he has the metabolism of a hummingbird. I immediately went to Waitrose’s and doubled our usual provisions, keeping mind the Dutch preference for ‘belegde broodjes’ - sandwiches.

We tacked back and forth behind the line, watching the two smaller boat classes starting before us. Like most experienced boats we had a clear plan for the start and the initial 13 miles of tricky tides and shifting winds in the West Solent. We are the lowest (slowest) rated boat in our IRC 2 class, and our first tactical challenge would be whether to aggressively start in the Castle end, with a swift favorable early tide, or a bit further out from the scrum of bigger and faster boats, hoping for clear air.

The first two starts did not help with this quandary, and demonstrated how herd mentality takes hold. The first starting group, the smallest of the participants, formed a long line and paraded from the north part of the line to the south, converging on the Castle end of the line. Twenty minutes later, bearing in mind the first start, the medium sized boat group spread across the middle of the line and started well away from the Castle end. As our start time ticked down we sailed powerfully toward the Castle end, unfortunately pinned well in among the other 60+ starters with the same idea.

Much of the drama and tension of this 600 mile race occurs in the first minutes and hour, with close racing and tacking. As the cannon sounded we crossed in a flash mob of big boats, but curiously enough just above fellow Dutch and Ijspegel doublehanded competitors J-Quattro (a sister J-120), and Junique, third DH in the 2013 Fastnet and one of the pre-race favorites. Further ahead another Dutch duo and race favorite, the specially pimped J-122e Ajeto, started on port tack in free air and the swiftest current, a gutsy move and impressive opening gambit.

Like a golfer who goes on about shooting a birdy in an otherwise uneventful round, those who sail regularly in the Solent take great satisfaction and speak almost reverently about ‘having a good Solent’. The first few minutes were a rollicking affair in bad wind and chop, but holding our own with the big boats. Junique had a moment of red mist in tight traffic and a few of us veered away to avoid a collision, with some expressions of displeasure in their direction in English, French and Dutch.

As the class spread further we tried to sail in the better current along the south Solent, tacking quickly and neatly. As with Ken and Raymond one of our simple pleasures is to out-tack close-by fully crewed boats, and even greater joy when the fully crewed boat makes a sloppy tack and ends up below us. Patrick also enjoyed this little game, but it is much work and we were both puffing within the first 30 minutes.

Staying is the faster tide in the main channel and tacking when necessary for clean air, we managed a good early Solent. The tide differences are significant, and an hour in we were pinned down by two boats close above us on starboard tack. We sailed increasingly deeply into a patch of dead water, and after a few futile gestures to the nearest skipper I shouted to his rail meat (crew seated on the rail) that the tide was F%$#* here and we wanted to tack. Not quite forbidden outside help, but the word swiftly passed from rail meat to trimmer, and trimmer to skipper and belatedly she tacked back to port. We worked back to the main channel, as frustrated to lose a few minutes to others in our class as we would be in a short course race, but with 600 miles left to win back the lost ground.

At the west end of the Solent the channel between the Isle of Wight and mainland narrows and the current picks up strength. The forecast for the first hours called for light to moderate winds, and some of the boats chose light weather jibs accordingly, while we appreciated our choice of the medium jib as the winds hit the high teens. We began to overtake boats in the earlier starting classes, but more significantly, the spectacularly big and fast maxi class caught up with the field. Sailing quickly and tacking cleanly and repeated among a hundred other boats in a confined area is hard work and stressful, but we watched Rambler 88 sail close to the Island shore in less favorable tide to keep far from the fray, finally tacking up and trying to work through the armada ahead of them. This also poses issues for Corinthian boats and skippers with short attention spans – how can you focus on helming and sail telltales when some one of the most impressive and leading-edge boats of our era is passing 50 meters to windward, with the ever inspiring chalk Needles promontories lying to leeward?

Like many offshore racers we download digital weather forecast files before the race (‘grib files’) and employ navigation software to help plan our course routing. We periodically wrestle with differences between what the software proposes and our gut feel from sailing in these waters, and in this case the software routed us far south from the Solent to eventually take advantage of a favorable wind shift. Our first instinct, discussed in detail the night before with our shorecrew (Ken), was to head north to the coast and then tack into the St. Alban’s ‘race’, where the tide speeds up along an underwater ridge. We managed huge gains the previous season when we ‘caught the race’ perfectly early in one competition, and as we headed with a smaller group south I gazed back longingly at the larger group tacking North.

Though a long race over several days, the time-honored wisdom is the winners and losers are determined the first days along headlands of the English south coast. We continued south for several hours, the wind direction remained steady, and whether impatient or influenced by the herd we finally joined other boats sailing back north toward St. Albans. In late afternoon the tide began to ease just as we arrived at the south end of the race. It is like coming to a field party after all the cool kids have left, finding only a few laggards lying around among scattered empty Dixie cups. Patrick commented before the race about my experience on the Solent and potential advantages, and I had made a tactical hash of the critical first hours of the race. We lay far from our class leaders, and would need to work even harder to even claw pack a decent position.

Deeply disappointed and kicking myself, and now tiring from helming since the start, Patrick took a break below while I engaged the autopilot and slumped back on the cockpit seat.

IRC 2H

Breskens Sailing Weekend was weer geslaagd

30 augustus 2017 - Damen Sailing Breskens zit er op. De zeilers zijn tevreden. De wedstrijdleiding kijkt terug op een mooie laatste dag en op een mooi weekend. Al was er zondag ...................... Lees verder

Maverick's Fastnet Race - Episode 2

3 september 2017 - Within a minute I heard a ‘clunk’ and Maverick slowly turned to windward and luffed. I yanked the wheel and steadied her. A clunk on a boat is never a good sound, and by definit... Lees verder

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