Round the Island Race
➜Sam gets us in close for the tide lift, then
out for the better winds. Later Ruth admits
they’d never had Tantris so heeled, her
gunwales under water and spray fl ying;
42 years old and honking along...
And by St Catherine’s Point at 1630 the
wind was gusting 20 knots, we were doing
7.8 knots over the ground and we’re all
thinking: ‘this could just be all right after all’.
I’ve got mixed feelings about this part of
the island. My Dad and I did our fi rst
Round the Island Race long, long ago
and in his later years we had a bit of
tradition that I would phone him from the
race at Niton just behind St Catherine’s,
which was a place he loved. He died on
the day I was doing the Round the Island
in a Volvo TP52 in 2010 with a load of
sailors from the British Keelboat Academy
training for the Round Britain race. I got
the news as we passed Niton. I hope he
was looking down when we rounded
St Cats this year, sails fi lled, full of hope,
sitting up to windward, our foaming wake
clear and present.
And then we stopped. I mean not just lost
way, but stopped like we’d sailed into a
bouncy castle, tossed up and down by the
tidal overfalls. The wind went from a steady
18 knots to 1 knot in less than ten minutes,
with the masthead indicator doing
helicopter impressions, Ventnor in sight,
but no more accessible than the moon.
“I’ve got no steering,” said Nik, but there
was nowhere to steer.
“There are no boats sailing at Cowes,”
said Sam looking up from his mobile;
“they’re all crossing under power.”
“Look out there,” said George. We did
and not one single visible boat was sailing
or pointing in the same direction.
“That little piece of cheese in the water
has just overtaken us,” said Oscar.
The sun beat down, the jib fl apped and
the watch ticked. I had a Rich Tea.
Nothing moved.
We lowered the jib; 20 minutes passed.
“Let’s give it another ten,” said Sam. Still
nothing moved; the water was so fl at you
could see the boat’s refl ection; I’ve seen
rougher mill ponds.
Oscar ate more cheese and from
somewhere a Dundee cake appeared.
Ten minutes later, Nik fi red up the mighty
Yanmar and we radioed race control and
Bembridge for a berth.
“We’ve had a wonderful day, we’ve had
some great sailing, but we’re not going to
get to Cowes and trying to do it is going to
ruin the day,” said Nik with impeccable
reasoning.
And that’s where we left the race. Just
one Contessa – Binkie II – made the fi nish
before the 2230 deadline. Very well done
to them!
Of the 27 Contessa starters, 22 retired
and the other four were over time. The rest
of the results read similarly, a litany of
retirements and gritted-teeth
determination. That’s sailing for you, but
I’d vouchsafe everyone out there had a
fi rst-rate day.
There have been about 750 Contessa
32s built since 1971 and it’s one of the
only ‘golden era’ hulls that are still being
built brand new today. Jeremy Rogers
built the David Sadler design in
Lymington until he went bust in 1983.
There followed a lacuna where boats
were built in Canada, Poole and by
Mike Slack, until Rogers bought the
moulds back, rebuilt the business and
started again.
The 32 has its own very active class
association and punches well above its
4.3-ton hull weight, with a reputation for
strength, heavy-seas stability, a weather
helm and a very wet cockpit.
There’s a personal connection here. I
was bought up in Lymington, where
Jeremy Rogers is based and I was at
the Earls Court Boat Show in 1971
when the Contessa 32 was fi rst
launched. My Dad used to make the
annual pilgrimage where attractions of
the Guinness stand were (almost) as
compelling as seeing the latest in boats;
I was just a school boy, but collected
lots of leafl ets, soaked up the glamour
and ate my weight in steak and chips in
the pub on the way home.
I even had a job at Jeremy Rogers in
holidays and weekends, cleaning up
and going up masts mending the
rigging on Folk Boats. But when the
Contessas were pulled out of the
moulds it was all hands to the pump.
At that time sailing was the juice and
in Lymington the joint was jumping.
Rogers was producing a Contessa a
week and some owners wanted to see
their boats emerge from the moulds,
which meant you were often tripping
over them and their families while
tugging at a huge side of GRP mould
and catching bits of it fl ying like tiny
scythes through the air along with some
fairly rich Anglo Saxon...
I went down to see Jeremy Rogers
before this year’s race, which was at
once reminiscent and terrifying. These
days this Lymington yard is the go-to
place for refurbishments and true to
form there were a couple of boats in theworkshop.
I saw a
Contessa
26, which
was stripped back to a bare hull,
but due to be at the start of the race that
we were also preparing for (which
made me feel a lot better: we had a lot
to do to be ready for July 1st, but not
that much!)
They were also restoring a very
special Contessa, which the Rogers
family now own and which I spotted in
the marina before the race. Assent is
her name (see below for some of her
remarkable history) and with her clunky
mast rungs and slightly foxed hull had
more attitude than any of the boats
surrounding her with their Ritzy
gelcoats and stainless steel rigging.Counting on Contessas
LEFT The Rogers
factory in
Lymington in the
1970s.
BELOW The
author (left) was
on the water as a
young boyThe late Willy Ker’s 1972 Contessa
32 Assent is famous for, among other
things, being the only small-boat
class-fi ve fi nisher in the infamous
storm-hit 1979 Fastnet Race.
Helmed by Willy’s 23-year-old
son, Alan, and a group of friends,
they didn’t have a VHF radio so had
no idea of the magnitude of their
achievement until they docked at
Plymouth. But that’s just a small part
of this remarkable yacht’s career
which includes the 1978 Round
Britain plus single-handed cruising
in the Faroe Islands, Greenland,
Iceland and the Falklands.AlexIrw
in