The Yachting Year 2018

THE YACHTING YEAR 2018 | 55

St Catherine’s juts out into the Channel and as we sailed

in towards it we could see the tide was turning in our

favour. e odd weedy, seemingly forgotten shing pot

buoys showed the telltale wake that reinforced the

Navionics data on Kate’s iPad.

We kept in as much as we dared, enough to see the

smiling faces of the many spectators enjoying a great day

out, watching the eet go by. It is a rocky part of the

coastline and we were close, but some had been closer.

We passed one poor boat hard on its side on a nasty

exposed rock, the spinnaker streaming from the masthead,

apping in misery. We were running square before the

wind with the big jib poled out to windward. By now, we

were over half way round, so technically on our way home.

Kate and the kids had done great, but we had some way yet

to go.

Passing larger yachts

So far the eet had been swept up the Solent past Hurst

Castle, to then turn hard le round the Needles lighthouse,

to reach down the southwest coast of the island to St

Catherine’s Point, and then to change course again, to head

WNW across Sandown Bay heading for the Bembridge

Ledge buoy. Once round this, the eet makes its way either

side of No Man’s Land Fort, back into the Solent for the

last leg past Ryde and across Osborne Bay to the nish line

back at Cowes.

e wind was quite strong as we ran dead before the

wind towards Bembridge Ledge and some boats around us

were broaching and spearing away o course, others were

lying on their side, sails ogging.

On board Sabrina, our long jib stick was bending under

the pressure as we were pulled forward by the straining

sails. I did not feel completely in control, but we were

going well. I have to admit, the rounding we made of

Bembridge Ledge buoy was not my best-ever tactical move

in a yacht race. It all started several minutes before, when I

decided to drop the poled-out big running jib and put up

the working sail.

Because of the strong wind, I wanted to get this done

before the boats around us started converging on the mark

while I was still wrestling Dacron on the foredeck. e

team was briefed and the sails were changed – so

eciently, in fact, that we ended up wallowing around for

several minutes and rounded the mark outside a group of

several larger yachts that had caught us up, their crews

struggling to manage their unwieldy sails or appreciating

the importance of changing course towards the next mark.

Instead there were several unnecessary orders shouted to

us ‘smaller boats’. We let their unpublishable comments

carry on the wind.

We cleared our way and settled into a marvellous

creaming reach towards No Man’s Land Fort, passing the

entrance to Bembridge on the way. It seemed as though

Sabrina was eager to pull away from the hiccup of the last

rounding and we were sailing with cruising boats far

bigger than ourselves.

ough it should be said, had they concentrated more

on their sails and having a clean bottom instead of smiling

at us as we went slowly past them, it could have been a

dierent story.

e tide was owing east and many of the boats on this

leg sagged to leeward, even by half a mile, following each

other and giving themselves far more distance to sail. We

stayed on a straight course, watching for any wind

shadows as we closed to the land near Seaview. Ahead of

us a bottleneck was forming near the fort, as boats moved

into the stronger tide and came on to the wind for the beat

back up the Solent. We only draw 4 6in, so we stuck to

our plan to go inside the fort and skirt the edge of Ryde

TYY4 Round the island.indd 55 04/12/2017 15:19