RORC/JOG Cowes Dinard St Malo: enter through RORC

The weather forecast was so promising for this race.  Plenty of sun, warm,

enough wind to get us their quickly yet still give us time to enjoy the

scenery without working the crew too hard.  Well we got the sun (some more

than others), it was warm, and we had ample time to appreciate the scenery

because the wind almost died leaving us all very frustrated and wishing at

times we'd pulled out at Alderney for a big night instead.

We'd scraped into the bottom of IRC 0 which left us as the little guy

amongst some fairly professional looking boats.  At least we'd not have to

fight for clear air out the Needles we thought - and were proved correct. 

Expecting the wind to veer further to the west in the late evening we

elected to take a far westerly route out of the Needles so we could get our

reaching spinnaker up early and rejoin the fleet with the east flowing tide.

This plan worked fairly well (despite the wind not behaving as forecast) and

by dawn we could see many boats further to the east working their way west

whilst we held a fairly straight course to round Guernsey. 

By around 07:00 we were approaching Guernsey and found the doldrums had come to St Malo for the weekend.  The wind dropped to about 5kts and the large

swell (about 3 metres) shook all shape out of the sails.  We stopped.  We

basically sat and watched as the boats bunched up.  Frustration grew.  We

had Just So (J 109) a couple of hundred metres to the east, EH01 (Beneteau

47.7) shouting distance to the west and Old Mother Gun a couple of hundred

metres behind - see video.  Eventually we realised that the wind built on

the face of the swell and dropped as the swell rolled under us.  Our target

was to get moving (in any direction) - and after about 5 very frustrating

minutes we'd managed to catch a puff to get us to about 0.4kts of speed.

Now we were moving we had steerage and were able to aggressively harden up

before the swell hit us and bear away on the crest.  Soon we'd managed to

get our speed up to 3kts in 5kts of breeze which built apparent wind and

hence speed.  We were now off and racing again!

Soon the wind built to about 8kts true and we were beam reaching with our

biggest kite at about the same speed.  At times we were hitting 10kts again

and St Malo was now looking good for a 16:00 finish.  However the wind gods

were not so kind and soon the breeze had died again with about 10 nm to the

finish.  We had elected to stay west to avoid fighting the tide into St

Malo.  As it transpired this was a school boy error - well with 20/20

hindsight it appears to have been.  As the wind from the WNW dropped to

about 5kts we had tide pushing us east at about 3kts giving us an apparent

breeze of 2 kts.  The boats which had gone east early were now beam reaching

into St Malo from the north powered up under spinnaker.  They were using the

tide to sail a hotter angle and ferry glide into St Malo.  We on the other

hand were basically being washed there with the tide.  The last 10 miles

took us 3 hours to sail and all we could do was watch the boats on the

eastern horizon power through.   The temptation to turn the key and drive

home in frustration was very high!

Coming into the finish we realised S X Girl had once again done a brilliant

job of showing higher rating boats exactly how it should be done and were

about 400 metres ahead of us.  With so little wind we could not sail as deep

as them since the mainsail was blanketing our spinnaker.  If we "hotted up"

we'd miss the finish line.  In desperation we dropped the mainsail

completely allowing the spinnaker to fill and our speed shot up immediately

- hmmm why didn't we think of this 2 hours earlier!.  We had speed, could

sail deep and were quickly approaching S X Girl who were now about 100m from

the finish.  They may have mis-judged the finish and had to drop their kite,

hoist the jib and beat the 100 metres against tide back up to the line.  We

knew we could pass them.  We then realised our spinnaker does not have a

sail number, our main was down and our dodger was not visible under the

spinnaker.  Just before the line we had to do a quick hoist of the mainsail

to identify ourselves.  We crossed about 20 seconds ahead of S X Girl in the

last of the fading light (see video) - knowing full well they had deservedly

beaten us on handicap (and in fact won the 2-handed class overall).

Our return forecast after leaving Alderney was that we'd arrive at the Needles at

21:00 - 90 minutes before slack water and into adverse tide.  SeaPro told us

the tide would be 1.6 at the Needles.  Given we were sitting on between 9

and 12.5 kts boat speed in 20kts of wind we were not unduly concerned with

1.6kts slowing us.  All the same we prepared the boat by dropping the kite,

unfurling the jib, rigging a preventer on the mainsail from the back of the

boom to the bow and then returning to a cabin top winch, donning lifejackets

and issuing safety lines.

The mist had descended and we could not see the Needles lighthouse until we

were about 3nm away.  The wind from the stern was against the tide flowing

out the Needles.  Additionally there was a significant swell from the stern

quarter which was kicking us around.  We decided to furl the jib to improve

our forward visibility.

As we approached Bridge cardinal mark the sea state became very confused as

swell collided with a fast running tide.   We started to surf frequently and

the highest speed we saw was over 15kts through the water.  At times the log

came out of water (instrument speed dropped as we accelerated down the

waves) - GPS however showed us at almost 13 kts speed over ground.

Comparing log to GPS the tide was far greater than the predicted 1.6 kts -

exceeding 3 kts at times.  This was more challenging than we expected and we

had to be on our toes for a tense 5 minutes until the worst had passed.  We

grabbed some video of the Needles just after we'd settled ourselves again. 

A few lessons learned on reflection:

- The Needles is not a nice place at the wrong time

- Our crew should have all been clipped on.  Had we broached and lost

someone we could not have recovered them.

- The motor would have been almost useless in the sea state we had.

- The helmsmen should have been wearing a lifejacket (lack of preparation)

- Fitting the preventer early allowed us to sail deeper, faster and with

less risk of injury and damage.

- Furling the jib gave us better visibility

- Crew calling the waves from behind helped prepare helmsmen

- Working the vang on the main helped dump power as stern was kicked around.

- if we were not able to maintain over 10kts of speed this would have been

considerably more worrying

- for the experienced the North Channel was a better option.

- perhaps dropping the mainsail and sailing in on a full jib may have

reduced the risk of broaching since we would have been pulled rather than

pushed in.

2 videos at - http://www.youtube.com/user/jogracinguk

Thank you to race committee (JOG and RORC), fellow competitors and my crew.

Anthony

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