A BRIEF FORAY INTO RACING


One way in which impoverished sailors like me can get out onto the water more often is, of course, to join a sailing club. I joined one on the east coast last year and I have enjoyed a few relaxing and instructional weekends sailing with various other members. After a long winter break, during which I took the shore-based Coastal Skipper course to keep my hand in, one of the first sailing opportunities of the year was a 30 mile race. "More of a cruise with a purpose" I was assured by the organiser, "Very much a social event. Not really all that competitive".

Now, I am very much a cruiser rather than a racer. I tend to give a wide berth to any yacht with a colour co-ordinated crew and, I have even found myself nodding sagely when hearing that their skippers care little for the 'Rules of the Road' and would run you down rather than change tack. But it's a weekend on the water so I tentatively put my name forward as crew.

As I haven't a clue what to do with a spinnaker and my tactical prowess would probably have us tracking backwards against the tide, I offered up my services as galley slave and began to look forward to getting back out on the water.

I did get a little worried when I received an email from the skipper advising me to bring plenty of bottled water as we would be running with near empty water tanks. Now, call me a novice but that sounds pretty competitive to me.

The appointed day for the rally dawned cold and foggy and the flat sea was disturbed by only the slightest breeze. Well, at least it was easy to cook breakfast under way. We drained the water tank leaving just a little for washing up and hot drinks.

As we made our way to the start at NE Gunfleet buoy, we called another of the competitors only to find that two boats had pulled out at the last minute. So, now it was just us and one other boat.

We eventually drifted over the start line with a five to seven knot following breeze. Goose-winging with the jibe preventer in place and the Genoa poled out we slipped quietly through the mist and fog. This was my first time sailing in such poor visibility and I strained my eyes into the greyness, convinced that, at any moment, I would see a huge ship bearing down on us out of the fog. We could hear engines, which seemed to be very close by. Eventually the helmsman spotted a large shape off the starboard bow moving quickly across our path before it was swallowed up again by the fog. The skipper, who hadn't seen it thought we must have imagined it until we found ourselves bobbing gently in the wake of a large ship.

As we rounded the north end of 'Long Sand' and turned south we had three small surprises. The first was that we still had a following wind and the second was a strange call from the other boat asking why their radar trace of our progress seemed consistent with 'bumping' into something before turning north for a while then making a wide turn south. Of course, we have no idea what they were talking about and, making mental notes to get the charts updated, we denied everything. Where was 'Big Brother's radar' when we were in the fog? Oh, and the third little surprise; we had no water with which to wash up after lunch!

The skipper calculated that we were extremely unlikely to reach the finish at any reasonable time and, anyway, in our view we had already won the race because the other boat had also informed us that they were now on motor so, we motor sailed on to Ramsgate.

Motoring out of Ramsgate marina on Sunday morning we were surprised to find a bit of a swell which made the going a little uncomfortable. For me it just brought a conclusion to the latest of my experiments in combating sea-sickness. Thanks to that swell I can now rule out wrist bands and 'Trevella' homeopathic tablets. Having already eliminated stugeron on a trip from Plymouth to the Solent my options are now very few. Someone suggested that drinking lots of beer the night before may be a factor but, that can't be right, can it? Anyway, I was completely useless until we arrived back in Suffolk Yacht Harbour. We had more wind on this return leg and the other boat joined us providing an ideal photo opportunity for both boats.

It was a very good weekend and a great start to the sailing season. Even without a race we had an extremely enjoyable and interesting weekend and, I can now say that I have crewed in a race and not come last.

Geoff Evans