It’s been a while since my last report, though the reason is certainly not due to lack of events! Everything has happened from a dismasting in the mini-Fastnet race to crossing the finish line 1st in class on the Shetland Round Britain and race!? ...

Having achieved a respectable 16th of 100 on the foggy Trophée Marie-Agnès Péron, I was really looking forward to learning more about DOMOSOFA.COM on the longer, double handed Fastnet race, along with my crew Dave Parker who is one of her builders.

As always on the Mini-Fastnet, there were some fairly hefty names on the entrants list including Alex Thompson, Bruno Peron and Sam Manuard, so the competition was always going to be high, a really good test for myself and the boat. The weather looked like very light airs for the majority of the race, so we would have ideal conditions for us to try out the new large genoa which the guys at Kemp Sails had specially designed and built for us.

We had a pretty good start, having skirted the usual argee-bargee by the committee boat, and rounded the first mark not too far behind Brossard , we settled in for the evening with a series of tacks up through the Channel Du Four gaining a few places in the process. As the sun came down that evening, the entire fleet drifted into the predicted high pressure centred in the middle of the Celtic sea, some opted to go a little way up the French coast before heading North, others rhum lining it.

We coaxed GBR 500 along as best we could around Wolf Rock light house and up to the Fastnet, almost entirely in painfully light airs. By the time we arrived, the fleet was in an almighty jumble with normally very slow boats ahead of some of the super protos. We were really disappointed to find ourselves 42nd around the rock, but then strangely consoled to have rounded ahead of Adria Mobile, which had aboard the legendary 2 time transat winner Sam Manuard sailing one of his own designs! Basically, it all came down to just being in the right place for the drift up there and unless you had some kind of detailed outside weather info, which is against the race rules, it was just a lottery.

Resigned to the fact that we had a lot of catching up to do, the predicted freshening breeze was where we would have to make up our losses during the return leg. It was all going well, 20-25 knts of breeze on the nose, and with a conservative second reef in and DOMOSOFA.COM was eating up the miles, until the worst thing could have happened… with a large bang the port spreader ripped off leaving the mast looking like a banana!! We rushed to get the sails down, but unfortunately not in time, and the whole rig snapped in two.

We cut down and saved everything and erected a jury-rig that enabled us to sail upwind towards the Scillies at about 60 degs to the wind. We sailed like this for 24 hours, getting us to within 45 miles of the Scillies, but after a shipping forecast giving increasing winds ‘perhaps reaching gale 8 at times’, we decided it was time to get a tow the remaining miles before the temporary rig fell down again as it had done when we first put it up.

After Falmouth Coastguard co-ordinated a fishing vessel to tow us to Scilly, we suffered the horrendous 8 knt tow into 3 meter swells for 6 hours, almost being catapulted out of the back of the boat every time she launched off the wave tops.

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Luckily I have some of the finest friends in Scillies, and Keith and Carol of Rat Bags went out of their way to help us get everything sorted, as well as unwind after the stress! Over the next couple of days Dave and I wondered around Scilly like two shipwrecked mariners checking our rigging work, re-cutting the mainsail and constructing a sprit pole before sailing the wounded race boat back to my home port of Penzance where she’s now out of the water for proper repairs. Thanks everyone from Scilly and Penzance for your help!

Just to explain briefly the SRBI race bit, at midnight the other day I had a call from a friend who was racing in the Round Britain race saying that the skipper had fallen down the hatch and had broken his ribs leaving him unable to carry on the race. They were well out in the lead for their class at the time and really wanted to complete the race, so Leslie Irvine called me up to see if I could help. I stuffed my gear into a bag and caught the 0530 train from PZ to London , got myself to Dover and cast off the lines of ‘Jager’.

Once again we were inflicted with light winds and were even forced to row some of the time, which bizarrely is allowed in the SRBI race. Amazingly, even after the 18 hour stopover where Leslie got Dick Koopman the Skipper to hospital and waited for me to arrive, we crossed the finish line in first place on handicap for the class!

Now I am finishing off the work on DOMOSOFA.COM and will tow her down to to have the new rig put on just in time for the single-handed Les Sables – Azores race.

What a hectic month this has been!

Cheers for now, and once again thanks to everybody for their help and support including my sponsors who are busy helping me get the boat ready in time for this next important race.

Woody

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