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.
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
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