2nd July 2011 Captain’s Log

Nautical Miles Logged - 50 (plus a bit from Portchester to Cowes and return)
Current Position of the Catweasel - Portchester (Wicor Marine)
Total Crew Count to date (inc. myself) - 4

Be warned - this is a long one, put the kettle on.

It’s been pointed out to me that I’ve been remiss in keeping this blog so, here I am, on the train to Portsmouth Harbour, writing.

I need to wind the clock back about eight days (to the 24^th June) to a sunny morning in Basingstoke.


The plan
Meet at the railway station at 09:00, purchase provisions in Sainsbury’s, catch the 10:00 to Portchester, spend an hour getting ready and then sail to Cowes. Stewart and I would spend the day providing some basic training to Carlos and Neil as well as playing with the spinnaker. We’d moor up by 16:00 ish and then head into town for a few beers. The next day, so said the plan, we’d race the RTI, each one taking a 2 hour watch at the helm, in the crew position, at the navigation table and finally a off watch. It was a solid plan. We’d complete the race, triumphant, and celebrate in style in Cowes. Along the way we’d been cheered on by friends (some of whom had flown in from Vienna) and parents (who’d flown down from Scotland).

The reality....
Ahh, of mice and men. We got on the train at Basingstoke and everything went well until someone said “What’s the worst that could happen?“. The train stopped. There was a trackside fire and we couldn’t proceed. An hour we sat there. Arriving at the marina an hour behind schedule (but not really bothered as I’d built in some contingency), I went off to meet the sail maker who was putting race numbers on the spare sail whilst the other three loaded the Catweasel. For reasons best blamed on myself the sail wasn’t ready but not to worry, they said, - it’d be done by about 16:00. So we set off a tad later than hoped for and had lost the training time but no worries - we arrived in Cowes, at our swinging mooring, at roughly 18:00. The Catweasel was ready.

Race day - the 25^th June 2011 . With the previous nights beers and kebabs sloshing around in our stomachs we headed off to Eegons for a pre race fry-up. In hindsight, this may have been a mistake. Anyway - back on board we waited on our swinging mooring for our starting gun having decided that being a wuss was better part of sailing (plus we didn’t want to sink anyone or be sunk). With the main pack off we loosed our warp and off we went, some fifteen minutes or so behind the main pack (our start time was 07:40). There were several boats near us so a careful watch was required but we’d made the right move I reckon. Avoiding the main pack reduced our newbie stress levels and we could focus on the sailing. Our only hails were of the jolly type rather than the screams of “starboard!!!”’ which could be heard drifting across the water.

The passage to the Needles was pretty rough and it “did for” Carlos who discovered a whole new way of feeling ill. After he’d fed the fish he went down below for a kip and the Catweasel was, for the moment, one crew man down. As we neared the Needles we noticed more and more boats heading back to Cowes but ignorance is bliss so on we went. If memory serves me correctly we arrived at the big pointy rocks of doom at about 12:30 and went around the point with ease (I’m redefining “ease” to mean “try to tack around the Needles several times but fail, having to bear away before trying, and succeeding, one more time, all the while watching the cliffs of crushiness getting very, very, very, close”).
From the Needles we ran before the wind in a very gentle ten to fifteen foot swell which., along with swallowing whole yachts, looked pretty impressive as they rolled up behind the Catweasel. It was rather peculiar to look up at waves. Sadly the swell took its toll and Neil was struck down by Mal de Fry-up. I popped my head down below every now and then and I was impressed by how quickly nausea set in and how long it took to recover. I’d estimate a five to one ratio - that’s five minutes below decks took me an hour above decks to recover.

At this point I need to point out that our VHF had been hearing mayday after mayday, the Solant coastguard & RNLI did an amazing job that day and if you know anyone that was on, or will be on a boat, then spare a thought for them and doff cap in a fashion of your choosing.

Anyway - we’d not seen any other yachts for literally hours but the Catweasel ploughed on, our half a reef (don’t ask) performing admirably. The weather, heavily overcast since the get go, was threatening to lighten up and the sky was now (this was about 15:00) a light grey instead of a dark grey. The seas were getting calmer now, the wind was dying down and the two guys below decks were starting to perk up so things were looking up. I’d had a change of clothes so was dry for the first time in hours and cups of tea and coffee were passed around. The exciting stage was over and all the remained was a gentle sail to the finish line.
The sun was shining, the clouds had cleared and a few other racing yachts were in sight and we were closing on the line. Another yacht hailed us and I hailed…OK OK, another yacht shouted at us and I shouted back - we’d missed a race maker and would be protested. A quick check in our hitherto ignored race folder infirmed us that we had to declare protests so a swift call was made and we were told a 2% time penalty would be applied so we relaxed a tad as we were here to complete not to compete.

On we sailed, and finally we had a chance to swap the helm around. Spirits were high all around now as I took the Catweasel across the finish line (in probably one of the worst finishes this year) and we grabbed our swinging mooring and cracked open a beer. We’d completed the RTI. - ahh, of mice and men.
The final number of boats to cross the finish line in Cowes was 1,302 and there were 438 retirements and 16 DSQ (disqualified) and/or OCS (on course side).”

Sure we were disqualified but for all of us on board just taking part was what mattered. I want to say thanks to my brother, to Carlos and to Neil for taking part, thanks to the Island Sailing Club for running the race and thanks to all the other competitors. It was only fifty miles and I’m aiming to do something in excess of thirty thousand over the next year and a bit but I reckon it’s going to remain one of the most memorable fifty.

Crew's Log: Stewart, Round the Island Race 2011

Friday June 24th, 9am, and Catweasel's crew were at Basingstoke station, hungover and ever so slightly sleep deprived after the last leg of Tim's tour of leaving dos. The plan was to head for the marina, get out onto the Solent by early afternoon and get some sailing time in ahead of the race. Carlos was a sailing virgin, Neil had sailed before but not for a while and Tim and I have both sailed on and off over about 25 years. Basically we weren't up to much and were all popping our RTI cherry - all the practice we could get was needed.

Within 5 minutes of leaving Basingstoke things had started to unravel. There was a fire by the railway line and we were running about an hour late by the time we reached Winchester - normally a 15 minute journey. This put our already mid-morning arrival at Wicor marina back to early afternoon, a delay compounded by the thoughtlessness of Portchester's planning authorities, who had consented to the building of a pub between Portchester station and the marina.

The next problem was with the sail. We'd taken the spare main in to get GBR numbered (for sailing in foreign parts), for some reason assuming it wasn't already wearing Catweasel's class number of CO170. It was. The meant that rather than slapping a few numbers on, the old ones had to be removed along with any remnants of glue, delaying the process considerably. By the time we left our mooring it was getting on for 5:30pm. No matter, we'd attach the sail to the boom, head off and worry about the rest as we motored out of harbour and get at least some tacking under the belts of our new crew. No - that wasn't to be either. The sail slide at the head of the main had been replaced as a precaution and had come with about two milimetres of bonus width. That meant some frenzied filing was needed and, while the Leatherman is a great tool, it's not the quickest way of slimming a sail slide and sat at the foot of the mast in the swell of the Solent isn't the best place in which to do it either, especially with Carlos having a roaring time at the helm and homing in on the biggest of the swells. Amongst nautical types there is a term for someone like that and the term is "bastard".

Delays and sail problems aside, we arrived at our swinging mooring on Cowes Road without incident, called the Island Sailing Club launch and made for the Vectis Tavern PDQ. This was our penultimate chance to settle on a clear strategy for the race so we got drunk and had a kebab.

Race day dawned in rather a grey manner with a fresh wind on the go, largely down to the kebabs I think. Having failed to use the previous evening to nail down a strategy we decided to go ashore and have breakfast at Eegons, where a "freshly cooked" fry up went from order to table in around 2 minutes. The strategy arrived at was that we would endeavour to to neither sink nor drown.

Back to Catweasel in the nick of time, assuming our intention was to be still on the mooring and halfway through the safety briefing when our start gun went off - I don't know if it was but we were. It was always a given that we were cruising and not racing so missing the carnage at the start line was a bonus really, and the delay would provide our first excuse for our anticipated poor time.

In no time we were underway and in no time Carlos, our sailing virgin, was feeling rough as hell. We must have been about halfway to the Needles when he broke Catweasel's chunder cherry. It was done with a degree of class mind you as a Harrods carrier bag was used to catch what should have flown off to leeward. Progress to Hurst Castle and the Needles was slow and, with the wind and swell increasing, the majority of cautious cruisers around us started to turn back. Our caution was driven by collision avoidance but we were all up for the wind and swell. Well, everyone apart from Carlos, who had retired below to hide on a bunk, held in by a lee cloth where he was kept nervously entertained by Mayday Panpan FM with nothing but a Harrods bag for company.

The only OMG moment we suffered was a failed tack whilst getting up close and personal with the Needles. The wind was slightly south of the swell so the momentum that took us through the wind was bludgeoned into submission by the swell while the sails were still luffing in the wind. This OMG moment was shortly followed by our only OMFG moment when the same thing happened again, this time even closer to the Needles. It was quickly decided that our only routes to safety were a disqualifying engine start or bearing away and jybing onto the port tack we needed. Desperate not to bow out on the first leg we turned our butt to the wind and before you could say "What comes after OMFG in the scale of escalating exclamations?" we had the Needles moving away from us.

The leg from the Needles to St Cat's point was a lonely one for us. Most of the people we'd started with, at the very back of the last fleet, seemed to have a greater sense of their own limitations and mortality and had turned back before the Needles. Carlos popped up from below briefly on this leg and got some sound advice from Tim on dealing with seasickness, threw up and went below again. Neil then decided he was going to take over on the wretching relay at which point, relieved of the burden of chunder monkey duty, Carlos started to recover. The swell we had on our beam down to St Cat's Point gave way to some lumpy stuff around the point itself and then it all got rather dull past Sandown Bay to be honest. We passed the capsized trimaran that we'd heard of so many times on Ch16 just in time to see the Bembridge Lifeboat not tow it anywhere. I don't know how that one came back in the end but it won't have been easy.

Given our imminent return to the Solent and all it's business we decided it was time to get some charting action on the go, so Tim went below to retrieve one of Imray's finest. Seconds later he was back on deck displaying the internationally recognised facial expression for "F#ck that sh#t!!" and spent the next half an hour trying to hang on to his lunch. I should point out at this point that our stowing was not up to the desired standard. To be honest it wasn't up to any standard and between the first four or five tacks off the start line the inside of the cabin started to resemble a badly loaded skip. Neil bravely went below and shovelled for all he was worth but, whilst dramatically decreasing the clutter and hazard, there was no real sense of what might be classed as order. Obviously this scared the life out of our neatly organised RTI folder and it had run off to cower in a corner, taking with it its contents of charts and instructions and leaving our downfall in its place. Without a chart upon which to plot our lat and long we fell back to basics - keep a big number of the depth finder and relying on the only available navigational aid, namely an out of date Collins road atlas of the UK (scale approximately one to a number with an awful lot of zeros on the end). At this point we noticed a nearby yacht sporting the familiar purple pennant of our fleet so decided we ought to stay close to him. Close enough in fact that we could clearly hear her helmsman when he yelled "You didn't round the Bembridge Lege Buoy. We're going to protest you." and for him to hear our response of "Er...OK". The wind and swell had pretty much died out by this time so I had another stab at finding the race folder and succeeded. All that was left in it was a note about protests, which was handy. Take it on the chin and get a 2% time penalty or argue the toss and risk a 5% hit. We had no idea about whether we had or hadn't rounded the buoy so called race control to 'fess up.

Once safely past Ryde Sands we half drifted toward Cowes and into the most painfully slow approach to the finish line in the history of the race. Any dignity that hadn't been lost already was jettisoned in the worst series of tacks bar none, the culmination of which was Catweasel losing all way and sort of drifting sideways across the line at 19:35 on the race clock, 11 hours and 55 minutes after our departure.

First contact with shore revealed that we had been disqualified but that we had confirmation of our completion and finish time courtesy of the official race blog. Okay so we'd cut a corner but had an outstanding day and had got round. On further enquiry it turned out we'd been disqualified because of the Bembridge Ledge Buoy incident, had not been protested for it and had basically grassed ourselves up in a vain effort to cut a deal with the race committee.

Another call to the ISC launch, followed by showers and we were back in the Vectis. This was followed by a meal and then a mooch around the entertainment laid on by JP Morgan before a water taxi took us back to our mooring.

Sunday dawned bright up and misty to the sides, with only the top of the Fawley chimney visible to the north of Cowes, so we launched back to Cowes after a wok full of sausages, bacon, beans and mushrooms, having decided Eegon's was a maybe a greasy spoon short of a cutlery set. The day brightened still further and after a healthy mooch around, and discovering that the Vectis was a late opener, we went back to the ISC for some San Miguels in the sun while Tim watched the prize giving.

As as soon as the ceremonies were finished we launched back to the ready to go Catweasel. With the engine running and Neil on the foredeck to cast off, the mooring line conveniently broke, chaffed through by the shackle on top of the swinging mooring. If we were to have pondered the carnage that might have ensued were this to have happened at any other time we'd have been mighty worried, so we didn't. A hefty piece of chain has since been purchased for future use.

A short motor across a misty Solent later and we were back in Pompey harbour and closing fast on Wicor. We'd had a truly fantastic weekend and a great kick off to Tim's round the world exploits. Both yacht and crew had done the necessary and done so with, if not style then certainly humour. It was, without doubt, a weekend that will not be forgotten.