Myth of Malham race aka Bear and Curry evening

Friday 25th June (Bank Holiday Weekend)

Arriving at the Duke of York at 8:30pm, most of the Bear of Britains crew were there, with the remainder arriving on the first red jet Sat morning. I had joined Bear for this race for two reasons. 1. to get some more offshore racing experience even though the miles wouldn’t count towards my Fastnet qualification 2. I’d been overtaken by Bear so many times in the Solent it was too good an opportunity to miss out on sailing one of the most well known racing boats.

Getting down to business before the food arrived, 'Chippie' aka James Gair (probably only to the tax man) produced his laptop with the best estimates of the weather conditions for the next 3 days. NOT GOOD! A low deepening South off Ireland was going to race down the Channel during the weekend with good sailing conditions for the Sat race, but hellish strong winds on the nose (40kn+) for the trip back.

The race course was: start 0850 at Cowes yacht Squadron, head West to the Needles fairway buoy and then South to France passing the Casquets, and the Channel Islands to port to finish at St Quai Potrieux, West of St Malo. This course provided a nominal 160 race miles.

Saturday 26th June

Arriving at the dock we were met by the Racing Academy crew, Tank, Alex, Henry (make like a coffin) and Phil (Minister of the Interior). Having set up the A sail lines and stowed our belongings we headed out through the fairway and got the Mainsail up followed by the Medium Jib. Our plan was to follow the race track until we felt the weather was starting to close in when we’d peel off West towards Dartmouth and head back to Cowes via the Portland race.

Not exactly on the gun but powered up we crossed the start line amongst around 50 other yachts and headed for the needles. Halfway there we lost a halliard up the mast when setting the Asymmetric so Henry was sent up to retrieve it followed not long after by him almost MOBing when during the A2 drop the guy got wrapped round his leg dragging him down the deck. Chippie took the honourable decision and put his camera down to retrieve his crew, but in hindsight it would have made good video!! By this time we had overtaken all the fleet but 'Yani', passed the Fairway buoy and were managing our 3 hour watch system. We were heading much lower than the chasing fleet however round 4:30 pm, we crossed the track of the leading boats at about which time we officially retired from the race and headed for the East Channel cardinal. Although the wind conditions hadn’t changed much (we saw around 10-13kn) you could see small clouds building up on the horizon to the West looking like a forest fire. Preparing for the worst we tried a jib peel which involves hoisting the new jib behind the working sail. Unfortunately we failed on two occasions to achieve this, resulting on the second occasion to a tear near the #4 jib bolt rope. We abandoned this technique and relied on bare heading the boat before the new sail was hoisted. Passing the E Channel buoy we then headed for the Channel light vessel as Chippie wanted to reminisce on happy days when becalmed one race he circled it twice whilst drifting in one 12 hour period!

Sunday 27th June

After passing the lightship we then headed North for Lyme bay and at some stage during the small hours whilst I had my head down the on watch crew warmed up the curry and then proceeded to have what seemed like a stag night party. One minute down below was ship shape and in racing fettle the next it looked like Baghdad! At around 3am the breeze had dropped to less than 7kn so with wind off, we put engine on as the tide around Portland Bill was pushing us west by around 2kn. By 5am the call came for the starboard watch to hall out the head sail which to Chippies dismay took 20 mins to hoist. After a debrief as to the differences between being on watch and off watch! we were woken up by Tank drilling us in a series of quick tacks up the Solent as we passed Yarmouth and Lymington. This is where Henry started to perform amazing dissappering acts on the bow, one minute he was on one rail the next he reappeared on the opposite rail without seemingly to have physically moved. Chippie managed to catch this amazing transition on video indicating an interim phase where he paused briefly between tacks to lie in a coffin like trance under the spinnaker pole! I didn’t realise the racing academy had Harry Potter as part of the core syllabus.

By this time it had started to rain so by 9 am we were tied up in Cowes yacht Haven and by 10am had stripped ‘Bear’ of all sails, personal belongings, curry pans and floor boards so the remains of the curry party could be scrubbed away.

After a debrief at 1230 in the Anchor I headed back home deciding not to sty and sail on the Monday as the back pain sustained earlier in the week was beginning not to respond to Max Strength Ibuprofen suggesting further exercise might not be a good thing! 45 boats did finish, Yani taking line and handicap honours in 15.5 hours. Full results at http://www.rorc.org/raceresults07/mythofmalhamrace/rau06.html

Guy Shelbourne 29-5-07

French Karma

Friday 4th May

Beating the Bank Holiday traffic I managed to get to Cowes for 6pm to find Jane and Derek provisioning Chernikeef 2 and Bear with a goodly supply of chocolate! Later on two ladies having travelled from Inverness joined us for the weekends racing un beknown to them meaning 36 hours of continuous sailing with no stops in Normandy for Croissants and Moules!! The highlight as they decanted their suitcase into a carrier bag supplied by Derek, was the appearance of a hot water bottle! We figured this could be deemed water ballast and might affect our handicap so sadly it was left ashore! You can be sure Sandra will add this to her list of items banned on board. Dinner was held at the Duke of York in the South African Embassy where the vast majority of 'Keefs' and 'Bears' crew turned up.

Around 1130pm Chris and I made it back from the Anchor to be faced by a small dilemma of where to sleep as only one berth was left. I chose to sleep on the light wind jib shown in the middle of the photo (not recommended), and decided at 5:30 am that since I couldnt sleep I'd head for the showers. We were scheduled to leave the marina around 6:30 since any later would have left us stranded in the marina at LW unable to get to the race start at 8:50am.

Saturday 5th May. If you've ever had your car stolen its how I felt when I came back from the showers. I got to the pontoon, looked around, decided I wasnt on the right pontoon, walked back, returned only to find the same empty berths. They'd only gone without me!! No worries I'll have a coffee and a bacon buttie before the troops sleeping ashore turn up to take the RIB to the two boats which are now gently parading up and down the fairway in front of ISC like two courting swans. 2 problems then faced me, a. Cowes doesnt wake up until 8am, b. cash, phone all on the boat. Around 7:45 bright and breezy the rest of the team arrived and we were ferried out to our repective boats, Chris did say he had wondered where I was!!!

With Derek on the helm we joined the fleet circulating around the Royal Yacht Squadron from the start. Our first task was to present ourselves to the committee boat dressed, overall in life jackets and harnesses (We wore virtual harnesses added using Adobe photoshop until Rob and Tom rocked up in the RIB with the real thing!). The forecast was initially for light winds with a period around lunchtime when 1 weather system would exhaust itself and be replaced by another hopefully immediately, which would bring very strong winds (yachtmans gale expected around midday Sunday). On this basis the course set was Start Trinity House/Cowes Mooring Buoy, East to Snowden, Horse Sand Fort, Owers buoy, Rustington buoy (almost opposite Worthing) and then South for Le Havre. Being in the SZ class we started last at 8:50. Bear feeling they were OCS went back and restarted giving us a good lead on them all the way up through the forts and to the Owers buoy. It was a great feeling for all of us as we powered up the race track overtaking everything in sight. The only boat that seemed to be holding its head up was the TP52 Fidessa Fastwave II. The winds at this time were giving us a boat speed around 6-7 knots using our light wind jib, which we struggled to pull into shape, eventually being passed by Bear to leeward. Heading for the Rustington buoy around midday we launched the Asymmetric spinnaker in winds that were becoming very fluky and watched the TP52 fall into a hole close to the mark leaving them with no choice but to douse the chute and hoist the jib again. We tracked out in Bear's direction and were impressed at the ease they made the mark rounding a good 10 mins ahead of us and 5mins ahead of the TP52. At this point we dropped the spinnaker and on a reach hoisted the medium jib, in anticipation of stronger winds mid channel. For the next few hours we maintained position, with the TP52 and Bear ahead of us and 'Yani' a Marten 49 just behind us. The wind stayed a steady 8-10 knots through the afternoon until around 6pm when we got a little more breeze which helped us break away from Yani leaving us a course midway between Bear which had gone west looking for wind and the TP52 falling off to the East in order to fly their kite. As night fell so did the wind so we headed slightly east in order to set the reaching assymetric which helped to get our speed up around 5knots but by midnight we wre striggling to maintain 2 knots. At this stage Mark, our navigator, was concerned our course was all over the place (which it was as we looked for wind), I can't remeber the number of times the hatch by my feet popped up followed by an insistent enquiry as to what course did we think we should be steering!! By 1am we were close to the finish and could smell the Gitanes smoke, but the wind dropped leaving us with an impressive 0.05 knots of boat speed. At this time Rob (our own Jamie Oliver) got the spag bol on and around 2 am in shifts we tucked in warming us up from what was turning out to be a very chilly evening. It took another 2.5 hours to get to the line being pipped at the last minute by Yani who stormed in from Port to cross a minute ahead of us. We crossed on 6 May at 03:31:15 giving an elapsed time of 18:41:15. Bear had crossed half an hour after the TP52 and 1 hour 10 mins ahead of us leaving them 2nd in class with us 3rd.

6th May 2007 Down came the reaching chute as we crossed the line and headed under main and engine back for blighty. At around 5 am the wind kicked in and Tom seeing 10knots of boat speed stopped the engine and got out the Heavy jib ready for what turned out to be a blitzing power reach back home. The wind eventually reached 20 knots with us seeing regularly 12-13knots of boat speed! At this speed the Farr 52 sounds just like a laser dinghy with a hollow sounding crunch as it punches through waves, unfortunately some of them getting into the boat such that every hour Charlie and Tom would wake up and dump 4 buckets from the bilges overboard.

We were in the Solent by 1:30 pm taking 10 hours to do the 70 miles. Although slightly overpowered it was exhilirating sailing making up for the benign conditions on the way out. By 3:30pm we were in Cowes and by 5pm having a well earned pint in the Anchor. 'Bear' is participating in the Myth of Malham race next Bank holiday with my next race being the Morgan Cup to St Helier on 15 June. Bring it on...

Guy Shelbourne 8th May 2007