The Yachting Year 2018

THE YACHTING YEAR 2018 | 51

I

f you’ve never seen or taken part in it, the Round the

Island Race course couldn’t be simpler. Just keep the

Isle of Wight on your le! Here are a few other tips

• don’t start the race early, leave the Bembridge
  Ledge buoy to port, avoid Ryde Sands, take plenty of
  snacks and make sure you go through the nish line.
  Sabrina is a carvel-built cutter to the shape of Yo n n e, a
  design that was drawn by Dr omas Harrison Butler in
  1931 and is part of a series of designs with particular
  emphasis on hull balance. Harrison Butler always referred
  to Yo n n e as a ‘sports boat’!
  Sabrina was built in Portsmouth at Clemens Yard in

1935. We are only the fourth set of custodians since then.
      We entered the Round the Island Race (this year run in
      association with Cloudy Bay) some 80 years aer Sabrina’s

launch, but still in time to get the discount for early

entries. e information we supplied about the boat and

the dimensions of the sails were used to provide a

handicap for Sabrina. We were rated in the Island Sailing

Club Handicap, a reasonable formula for general boats

outside IRC and one-design eets.

By the day of the race, there were 1,584 entrants. Of

these 1,393 boats crossed a start line that stretched from

the Royal Yacht Squadron masts at Cowes seemingly right

across the Solent. e eet was in 11 groups, starting every

10 minutes from 0700 until 0840 and heading west

towards the Needles.

Sabrina was in the last start at 0840, but our race had

begun well before that. We had slept on board the night

before, which meant I could bimble around doing little

chores: checking, tidying and dgeting and enjoying being

together as a family on board. I could have removed a lot

of gear but decided not to, however the rules specied we

removed the anchor from the bow roller and we took the

bag of warp and chain ashore too.

We le our mooring on the River Medina just aer 7am.

On board was the Nutter family – me, my wife Kate and

our children Jack and Molly, who were then 12 and 10. As

TYY4 Round the island.indd 51 04/12/2017 15:18