One More Knot's 2006 Round the Island race report

Got to the start line transit at the Cowes end of the line, for a good look. The light transit had the front set of lights on the flagstaff. The rear lights were not quite in line with the diamond. There was a window directly under the diamond shaped rear transit marker. The lights were tucked in one corner of the window, but slightly offset from the diamonds center line. Presumably, the window was being preserved for use by the start line officer. This gave the interesting effect of the light based transit being set On Course Side, which is clearly not a conservative thing to do. We believe that 2 rear transit lights, one in each corner of the window, would allow a more accurate from the far end of the line.

Our warning signal goes. We are loitering over bramble bank, near the back of the fleet.

Into the narrows, just north of the middle. The density of yachts is picking up and our speed is slowing doing. With the light breeze now behind us, we find a gap and put in our first gybe, on to port. Brave or what???

We manage to pass west of the mid shingle buoy, however once we are in the mainstream it was immediately apparent that we were losing out. The command to drop anchor is issued immediately as we simultaneously attempt to gybe and get back into shallower waters. We were possibly the first to anchor on the shingle side of the channel. The spinnaker was dropped straight onto the deck.

In the last hour, we had made just 1.2nm.

Everything has settled down now with the anchor ball hoisted. The wind had dropped to nothing.

The hook is holding in 18m.  We have dropped back 50m past the mid shingles buoy. We had 3 Sunsail boats with us when we anchored, however they were now being swept back towards Hurst with the rest of the fleet.

We could see the a mass of yacht caught at Needles and getting swept backwards into Alum bay. Looking through Hurst, we could see a wall of sails that couldn't progress. Yachts in Totland bay and Colwell bay were being swept backwards.

We could see the last few lucky boats through the gaps in the Needles which had just managed to scrape around before the tidal gate shut. And shut it was!

We had a bit of banter with a boat that managed to anchor nearby.

After a number of tacks we had eventually made about 1.4nm from our anchoring position. We observed another boat tryng to cross the mainstream to lighthouse. It looked tight, possible too tight. We elected to continue to improve our position to the west.

On our 7th tack we made our dash to round the lighthouse. Our westerly position allowed us to crack the sheets a couple of inches to keep the boat speed up. At the half way point, the GPS was indicating that we would round easily, which allowed us to bear away for even more boat speed.

Needles rounded! Hurrah.

A few other yachts were also making the rounding. As we went round, 2 yachts were inside us. One of which struck the Varvassi wreck. The other managed to slot inside it. We were someway off by comparison.

Now sure of our position in Scratchells bay, the kite was once again hoisted.

We were able to assess our position.  We were with a small group of other yachts, some of which had gone up the shingles side and crossed as we did. A few yachts subsequently managed to escape the melees on the island side to sneak around underneath the lighthouse.

The last of the boats that had made the gate could be seen down at St Cats.

With the Kite hoist, Paul advised a track slightly offshore of the rhumb line. Most of the rest of the fleet allowed the tide to sweep them into Freshwater bay. We headed higher, which actually enhanced our boats speed. On this leg we were the most offshore yacht of the 18 in our mini fleet.

"Oshun", a Maxi 1050 actually caught us up and eventually overhauled us. Her handicap indicates that she is marginally faster, however with both yachts sailing in close proximity, both gained over the rest of our fleet. We were encouraged to tweak the strings in order to maintain our speed. They retaliated and I suspect that was a very good leg for both boats. With a bit of help from the tide we saw over 8knts SOG consistently.

We certainly gained over the boats that were inshore.

Phil, helm of One More Knot, changed our heading radically and swiftly .... swerving to miss an accident on the motorway comes to mind. The pole was pushed as far forwards as possible, and the wind faded quickly. A swift change to white sails, by checking that the kite was still flying and clear of our furling gear followed by unfurling the #2. The kite was easily lowered onto the deck down the back of the headsail.

Our SOG dropped to 3 or 4kts and this coincided with entering the deep water channel.

Due south of St Cats.  With our VMG towards the next waypoint (Dunnose Pt) at zero due to our heading, we thought we were past the worst of the wind hole so we gybed. Our VMG improved dramatically to 7knts.

We were the first boat to gybe onto port. The inshore breeze at St Cats had started to fill again and 2 or 3 of the later boats managed to get a good inshore line and actually overtake those that dived offshore.

As we closed inshore on Dunnose, again reaching at about 140 off the wind to keep our speed high, the boat was aiming at the cliffs all the way to Dunnose. We allowed the tide to sweep us east and we were quite inshore when we passed Dunnose.

Some of the later boats in our mini-fleet managed to overtake us by taking an inshore route that had subsequently filled with a breeze.

The St Cats to Dunnose leg really shook up the order of our 18 boat fleet this year.

We make our Dunnose Point waypoint and find ourselves in very close proximty to Oshun once again. This time we are just in front and she is being sailed nicely. We need to point high of the rhumb line to defend our position.

Once again, tidal tactics are discussed. With the timing looking like we would make Bembridge as the tide turned, we were happy to allow ourselves to 'bank' some east just incase we were late at the turning mark. The prospect of battling an adverse tide as the wind failed wasn't one that we wanted to confront.

Another gybe, this time back onto Starboard. This leg has seen SOGs of 5 knots for most of the leg, but then falling to 3knts inshore. Oshun had gone inshore, both earlier and further and we were well ahead again.

The tide that had been helping us was failing, as was the wind.

At last, Bembridge following a frustrating 3knt stint since our last gybe. The tide was near slack and appear to be a bit unpredicatable.

Another gybe onto Port saw us start our final leg, back to Cowes. However it was 5.00pm and the radio had been active all day, mostly with retirements from yachts that couldn't round Needles or pass through Hurst. However, there was also some discussion on whether the finish line would be open late.

Our speed dropped to about 2.25knots over the ground. Doing the sums showed us that we weren't home and dry yet. Evidence on some of the fishing pots showed us that there was a small amount of adverse (easterly) tide as we left the Cardinal behind us.

A couple of boats managed to stay 100m inshore of our position and appear to do better.

Then it happened .... just 0.4nm NW of the Bembridge ledge, we managed to sail into a wind hole. Actually, is was more like a stripe than a hole. We wriggled. We pointed this way and that. With the spinnaker hanging limply we decided to take our only spinnaker down, especially as its a 1.5oz heavyweight. We replaced this with our largest headsail, our #2, but this too is made of heavy material.

The log showed 0.00 knots for a long time! The crew were sitting on the leeward rail and holding the #2 into shape. At times, the sail was tacked without changing the boats heading, such was our desperation.

The most frustrating part was that we could see fresh wind on the water a few hundred yards ahead. Looking behind, large numbers of the fleet we catching us up, although they now seemed to be unable to get around the Bembridge Ledge cardinal.

There were a scattering of other boats nearby, and very slowly (seemed like a lifetime) they were released from the torture one by one.

Eventually, we could start to feel some air movement on our sunburned faces, far earlier than the instruments could measure any real speed.

At last .... freedom. The new breeze was NW F3. At first we just made maximum speed away from the torture line.

We then tacked inshore, keeping our eyes open for any more flat spots. We thought that the last of the tide in the mainstream may not yet have turned in our favour. We certainly found a helpful tidal push up inside the forts (island side). As it was high water, we sailed well inside the post marking the cleared part of the submerged barrier. Basically, we continued to sail inshore of any holes in the wind and only tacked when the depth indicated that we needed to!

Our Ryde Sand waypoint, at the post.

Its all feeling good now. We know we are not home yet but we are starting to feel much more confident about finishing. It was feeling a bit cooler in the northerly F3 and our heading would allow us to fetch all the way back to Cowes with 7 knots over the ground, should the wind hold up. We knew we had a favorable tide now.

Despite our increasing confidence, we continued to race. All crew members were reminded to keep a sharp lookout for wind holes and other boats.

It was very strange sailing this leg with so few boats around.

We have had a very good leg, with a few wind holes identified on the island side. We have sailed in deep water with good tide and mostly over 8-9 knots SOG. On a few occasions we have sheeted in to point higher to miss suspect areas. This leg was very refreshing to sail. The crew were sitting on the rail for the whole leg to stay in front of the sunsail yacht chasing us, but we were also able to overtake another sunsail Sunfast 37 that was ahead.

We also had the obligatory container ship overtake us. We opted to stay near the S Ryde Middle mark while the ship overtook to leeward.

Once the ship had overtaken, we could see the finish line. Phil dropped the head of the boat to go for it, but as we approached Castle Point, the crew on the bow start shouting about a wind hole on the island side. Once again, we had to winch in the sheets to stay high for a little longer.

Castle point rounded and the wind drops significantly. We need to make the inshore line and the tide is now quite strong so we bear away.

It would be such a shame to be washed by the tide through the wrong side of the line.

Finished .... at last. 1 minute 25 seconds under 12 hours.

We crossed the line with about 4 knots over the ground, most of which was due to the tide. We crossed in front of the finishing "ferry" by only about 40m. There was a real prospect of not being able to get there.

Motoring back, once again we had no real idea of how we'd done. We thought that we had sailed quiet well.  We knew that hundreds had retired. Our limited racing experience was starting to pay off and we were learning new tricks all the time. Its such a long race, and there has to be a decent element of luck that we really didn't know whether we would be able to live up to last years 4th place.

Then Richard Tillett phoned from France with some results (demonstrates the power of the internet)! He told us that we were 5th in class which really made our day.

We were a very happy, sun burnt, tired, hungry and thirsty crew. We made our way back to Haslar (punching the tide) so that we could rectify a few of those points.