2011 JP Morgan Asset Management Round the Island Race Report
Jolly Windy day produces another great result for One More Knot
One More Knot : 3rd in Class
Crew: Phil, Phil B, Glenn, Kevan, Drew, Richard, Robin, Andrew
This year's race had a record 1908 entries. One More Knot was entered in good time, entry number 6!
Roll call
A roundup of the crew
Phil
Skipper and part owner of One More Knot. Undertakes the organisation, helming and generally strategy. Usually leaves his brain behind once the red mist of battle begins. Known for shouting, but this is less frequent now the crew are brave enough to tell him to mind his own business and steer the boat. Never uses any sun-cream, so his face always falls off after the RTIR.
Phil B
Used to race extensively on the foredeck of One More Knot. Then he spoilt it by buying his own boat, a 35ft catamaran. Trusted advisor to the skipper, particularly when it comes to busy beats.
Glenn
Ginger top Glenn is master of the sheets. Upwind and downwind Glenn's position in the cockpit is secure. Glenn's 2nd time on board was in the RTI, but that was a few years ago. With his complexion, he is not well equipped for forgetting the sun-cream.
Kevan
As a relative newcomer to sailing Kev has progressed incredibly quickly. He is now a sailing instructor. He charters his own boat, a Bavaria 36, Vis who is in the same start as One More Knot. Kev takes on nav duties, which once underway is usually related to tidal information and occasionally wind angles. He is also developing an eye for tactical opportunities in the fleet.
Drew
Our whipper snapper on the bow. He's only 59(ish)! We found him dangling off the bow of a competitor, Total Obssession Too, many years ago. Taking pity on him we gave him a new home when TOT was sold.
Richard
Yet another yacht owner, Bavaria 37. He provides the international element to the crew, coming especially to race from his home in France. Richard has led Phil astray many many times, windsurfing, yacht ownership and drinking way too much whisky! He is an all rounder with a good eye for sail shape from his dinghy racing days.
Robin
Ex commodore of the Portsmouth Sailing Club. He knows the right phone numbers to keep the bar open and should we need legal advice after a bad call he's the man! On board today, he's on the mainsheet.
Andrew
Andrew has raced with us in a couple of Portsmouth Parhelion series. Keen as a cucumber, he is the ships IT officer, providing run time updates on the competition via the offical trackers. He is also providing mainsheet relief for Robin. This is his first Round the Island ... and boy .... did he pick a windy one!
Preparation and practice
Detailed race planning started a few weeks before, which meant getting the right stuff on the boat, preparing our race notes and getting rid of all of the cruising stuff. The weekend before the race, Phil sent an email to the nav and stategy contingent predicting a drifter due to a high pressure over the Isle of Wight. How wrong could I have been. During the week, the forecast had changed dramatically and it was going to be "Jolly Windy". Windfinder forecast between 20 and 30 knots all day. It was pretty much on the money.
Most of the clearout ocurred on Thursday when Phil, Glenn and Andrew emptied the boat, filled trollies and subsequently their cars. We also elected to put the A3 asymmetric into the snuffer, due to the forecast. One More Knot's hull had been dived on by Ruben and his team from RS divers during the week. During the evening, most of the crew arrived ready for an early start the next day, Friday, for practice.
8am Friday the strings are untied in virtually still air. A visit to the Camber to pick up Drew and then 7 of 8 of us were on board for the morning practice session. So in our expected race sail plan, #3, full main and A3 in snuffer we set out toward Bembridge. The morning practice session wasn't at all representative of the expected race conditions, getting up to 8 knots of breeze. However, we established a few things. We found numerous ways of failing to deploy the asymmetric. It was a bit of a comedy session, but at least there was no race pressure.
We sailed back to Haslar for lunch at Landers, outside in the sun. There wasn't too much to debrief becuase we had managed to resolve a number of issues on board.
In the afternoon, we collected our final crew member, Robin, from the Camber. Once out of the harbour, the wind was now being much more co-operative, blowing at 18-20 knots.
The afternoon session continued to frustrate with the asymmetric in the sock. Eventually, we stopped and re-assessed the situation to come up with a new procedure. Hoist, furl, check that the snuffer is not twisted, if good unfurl and we would be ok. We tested this a few times and it worked well, particularly when combined with careful packing of the sock in the bag.
We also noticed tha the #3 bolt rope needed some TLC. Back on the pontoon, Richard set-to with the sailmakers kit to produce a wonderful repair.
A hearty meal in the Castle filled our bellies in preparation for the long race day. A few beers and early to bed.
Race Day
4:30 am. Alarms go off around the boat. Weary crew emerge without complaint. Maybe they were too tired, kept awake by the wind whistling through the rigging overnight.
5:00am, waiting for Andrew to come back, engine running. On emerging from the loo block and seeing us he sprinted (not a nice sight at any time of day!) down the pontoon. There was no way he was going to miss his first Round the Island. The strings were untied and we picked up the two Porstmouth based crew, Drew and Robin from the Camber before heading out into the Solent.
F5-F6 on the nose. Richard looked very dashing in his pinny as he cooked bacon butties for all. Phil took his glasses off after a few minutes, unable to see due to salt from the spray. No wonder Richard was happy to stay down below. The bacon butties went down very well. However they had taken a while. Phil did a quick assesment of SOG and ETA, ooopps, we would miss our start by 20 minutes.
Some swift action and the main was hoisted with 2 reefs, together with the #3 headsail. Our SOG went from 3.5 knots to over 6 knots, phew. We would arrive in time for our 10 minute gun. On the way, the tide and the progress was even better. Our Elan 333 rocket ship felt fast and really well balanced, out pointing all those around us. We arrived in the waiting area with 10 minutes to kill before being called under orders.
With a big fleet loitering around the line, on the brink of control we elected to stay uptide and downind of the main action. There was evidence of collisions. Hooligan, a half tonner had been dismasted in a collision near the line, a RIB was busy setting up a tow. We saw another returning to Cowes, dismasted ... and we hadn't even started yet.
One More Knot GPS track replay
Under orders we aproached the line carefully. The strong SW breeze meant that boats sailing down the line towards Cowes had rights over those sailing West towards the needles. As the clock ticked down, we got closer and closer to the line, sailing reach to reach and letting the tide move us west.
In the final 3 minute countdown we started our race play. On starboard, we forced a boat to tack onto port, we hadn't realised that he was on the black flag and was 8 minutes late for his race that had already started, otherwise we would have ducked them. We tacked back to port to look for a gap in the starboard fleet coming head on. On finding a gap, we tacked into it with 1 min 30 to go. Now on starboard and sailing parallel to the rest of the fleet we got some boat speed and then climbed up onto the front row of the grid.
The gun went and the "Blue Flag", class 5 race was on. The 200+ yacht fleet was sailing south towards Cowes. I had Kevan to windward looking back and Phil B to leeward looking under the sails. One More Knot's speed was good, we were certainly holding our own.
Kevan commented that we were out pointing the yacht behind. The shout went out for pointing and the crew hiked out. OMK climbed up above the line of the trailing yacht. Kev gave us the all clear and we tacked to port. Possibly the first boat in the fleet to escape. Phil sneaked a look behind, then shouted to the crew "look back and laugh", We were away, a cracking start, now in clear air and clear water.
Most of the rest of the fleet continued southwards until they ran out of water at Egypt Point. A very few boats had taken the opportunity to flip onto port up and down the fleet. Our beat continued, showing over 6 knots through the water and over 5 knots VMG (tidally assisted), well powered and balanced. We had a few minutes to settle down before we started to encounter the stragglers from the previous fleet. We settled into a routine to keep things as simple as possible for everyone. When on port we would duck yachts rather than tack. On the tacks, we would call it early to allow the crew to climb down off the rail instead of needing to climb upto it later. With the non overlapping headsail, we could come through the eye of the wind nicely and start beating immediately on a nearly fully sheeted jib. Usually, Glenn and Phil or Kev only needed a few turns on the winch to get everything in tight again. The tacks were pretty slick given the testing conditions.
Phil B was calling which boats to go above or below. We discussed which ones to watch closely. On more than one occasion, we needed to duck a boat which was being followed by another, but we succesfully threaded the needle to avoid ducking both. However, Phil misjudged one, attempting to thread the needle. We were on port, give way boat, with the 1st approaching yacht on starboard. The next yacht wasn't far behind but we didn't want to duck both. The answer, stay close to the first one and hold your breath! However, in attempting to stay close, the stand-on boat dissappeard behind the headsail and re-emerged past One More Knots's forestay. All except the last foot of her transom. Robin saved the day by easing the mainsheet and we bore away just enough. No touch, no scratchs, no space for a cigarette paper!
We got a mention on the offical race blog: 8:26 Race Control: First boat spotted by the team at Hamstead Buoy in the Blue fleet is the Elan 333 One More Knot (Division 5A), with the leader in the White fleet the J/24 A-Plan. Conditions are 20 knots from 260 degrees.
Progress was very good and we marched through the earlier starters. We occasionally cross tacked with another "blue flag". Upto this point we had been looking to stay in the deep water and tacking whenever it looked good for us to have our own space with clear air.
As we approached Yarmouth, we went even more tactical with the tide. At Yarmouth, Phil attempted to synchronise with the stronger tide, being close to Black Rock and Sconce before following the tide across to NE Shingles. The fleet compressed as usual at Hurst narrows. Kevan's sharp eye spotted a spot to tack across on port to find some fresh clear air before we got boxed.
Thoughts turned to the Needles rounding. A chat between the two Phil's came up with the game plan. We would abandon going inside the Varvassi, unless "a huge opportunity just happened", due to the sea state. We couldn't see anyone using kites in the 25+ knots of breeze. So, instead we would shake out the two reefs on the final beat before we bore away. During the discussion we sailed up close behind the Needles to be in a better position to judge the next tack before rounding. Possibly we went in a little too far and lost a bit of tide.
A short 2 minute tack onto port before the final tack onto starboard. The crew shook the reefs out whilst still powering along on the jib. We rounded about 150m outside the Varvassi, the point of no return! We had already seen a number of yachts, understandably returning, one or two without masts.
We rounded at 9:27, 2hrs 17 minutes after our start. The leg to St Cats at the south of the Isle of Wight was a broad reach. The tide was adverse, so the best tide follows the coastline, sometimes setting up an eddy. Initally, we just set off with the fleet on the rhumb line for St Catherines, just trying to keep the boat under the sail while we got used to the new conditions. The sea was quite lumpy and with the full main, One More Knot was pretty lively.
Trying to find a line that worked well, we came across "White Heather", a Swan 44. It turns out that she was in class 5A boat, the same as us, with a "Blue flag" As we approached we fell into her windshadow and progress stopped. We dropped back and went astern, looking to clear her. She started to defend by coming higher on the wind. We cursed her, a long way to go, we didn't want to get involved in a "match race". We didn't appreciate how important this would turn out to be later. In the end, we passed astern of her and managed to run deeper to get clear air.
Some yachts inshore were flying their kites. Well, that was like a red rag to a bull.
A quick discussion and the order to prepare the asymmetric went out. Drew and Richard got ready on the foredeck for the routine that we had practised. This time the wind was blowing 22-30 knots in 2m seas from the quarter.
Some 20 minutes after we had rounded Needles, the A3 was deployed. We broached! We dumped all the sheets, got her back on her feet and started moving again. As we bore away, Glenn and Robin sheeted in again and we broached! Not going so well. "Last chance" was called. This time we got more boat speed before gingerly sheeting.
Our speed, which had been 6.5-7.5 knots, went to 7.5-8.5 knots with a lot more surfing into the 9 and 10 knots area. A big improvement.
Steering was difficult and we ended up with Phil B looking astern calling the waves, so that we could bear away and surf down them, instead of rounding up. Glenn developed a technique of easing as the pressure of a gust hit, before sheeting back in, assisted by Kevan grinding. We were making good progress through the fleet.
The wind was picking up, but there was also the prospect of getting closer to the shore and needing to come to a slightly beamier course. Midway between Brooke and Atherstone Ledges, we dropped the kite and went back to white sails.
Phil B took a stint on the wheel sailing towards St Cats. Meanwhile Phil took a break, ate, checked the AIS for extra info and even chilled on the rail with the team as we were zooming along.
On the finals into St Cats, the helm was swapped back again and we took a very inshore path around the lighthouse. Most of the rest of the fleet continued on their South Easterly course, with a view to gybing later. We stayed along the shore trying to cheat the tide. It was difficult, running as deep as possible. There was a swell, small overfalls and 30+ knots of breeze. We tried to keep the jib pulling. Once the sea flattened a little, we flipped the jib to goose winged to stay inshore.
We spotted a RIB towing a completely inverted trimaran towards the Needles. Only the 3 very sleek hulls and a rudder was showing. We believe the helicopter may have taken the crew off earlier.
A few more slight course changes and a big broach before we eventually gybed on the approach to Dunnose Point. The offshore fleet was reconverging, although it was much more spaced out than before, The RTI race tracker show that our inside track saved us about 8 minutes from St Cats.
Acoss Sandown Bay, we initially experienced a drop in wind. Then it blew, 35.4 knots were recorded on the wind instruments. But just 3 minutes later, in a cool 22 knots the Phils were plotting again. The A3 was coming back out.
On flat water, the now well practised crew efficiently deployed the chute and we were away once again. Some boats had managed to fly the kite all the way around, including Tumbarumba and Polly. Both seemed to be very stable, very impressive. We could match their speed with the kite up.
Our course across Sandown Bay was simple, rhumb line to Bembridge Ledge. No mucking about, fast as you can please!
Towards the end of the leg, Phil B briefed the crew on the drop. The plan was to drop about 5 minutes before the mark. Plan was set. On a gust, Glenn eased the sheet. The next thing, the kite was away in its sock! "What's that for?", "Thought you wanted it down", "Not yet". Out it came again, all inside 10 seconds!
On the approach to Bembridge Ledge, the skipper of Polly was shouting something at us. We couldn't quite hear, I think he was asking for water at the mark. I thought ok, but we were still 400 yards away. Polly dropped their kite. Given the efficiency of our crew, we elected to hold on, powering past Polly. This seemed to upset Polly's skipper. We had broken the overlap by at least 100m, 10+ boat lengths before the mark.
We rounded Bembridge Ledge like on a Saturday morning around the cans, on the inside line. A quick point to windward kept us on a high line to stop anyone else from challenging our clean air.
The wind was on the beam as we aimed NE for Ryde. The boat heeled and lot of rudder was needed, so the guys put a single reef in the main. Afterwards balance was better and the speed was ok.
We spotted a capsized catameran, RoRo, designed for disabled sailors. Hopefully everyone was ok, a RIB was in attendance.
The reach continued apace. We stayed inshore and at one point had only 0.3m under the keel. The next phase was to get around Ryde Sand, so eventually we went back to pointing mode. The wind had now dropped to 18-22 knots and we weren't as powered up as previously. After a few tacks, we had passed Ryde Sands in no more than 1.4 knots of adverse tide. We had deliberately avoided going out past the line between North Sturbridge and No Mans Land fort.
At one point, we had a run in with Sunsail 4036. Their skipper saeemed to understand port / starboard. However, and sadly for us he did not understand that a windward boat should keep clear of a leeward one. In the end, we were forced to put the wheel down to avoid a collision of their making.
Tacking back inshore, we continued to make reasonable progress in more crowded waters. Behind the island, the wind was more fluky and we started to feel under powered. It was frustrating given the day so far. The reef was shaken out to improve our progress across Mother Bank aiming for Castle Point, the last corner!
Over Mother Bank we had been sheltered from the tide. At Castle Point we emerged into deeper water to discover over 2 knots of tide against. As usual, the finish line complications started. We were due to finish on the south line. Half the fleet were finishing on the north line. The Southern line is to windward, so yachts were getting out into the tide and then tacking to come back in on starboard. This forced approaching yachts on port to give way.
Some of the guys had suggested that we tacked into a space, but we didn't take the opportunity. A mistake I believe.
Initially, we ducked a boat, then we were forced to tack onto starboard. We probably should have continued further inshore, but not appreciating the strengh and effect of the tide tacked back too soon. It looked like we could pinch our way over the line, but other boats got caught out and tacked down on top of us. This forced us to tack again, only a few boat lengths off the line. It took a while to get going in the dirty air, by which time the cycle was about to repeat itself. Sooo frustrating ... the line was sooo close!
Then, at 14:58:24 seconds, we crossed the finish line to record our fastest yet, at 7 hours 48 minutes and 24 seconds.
We sailed clear of the line, this time reminding everyone to keep concentrating until we were in clear water. We didn't want a near miss like last year!
Results.
3rd in class, just 3s behind White Heather. Vogon of Cowes (RAF team) won by about 16 minutes. The class had 30 finishers and 38 entrants. 6th in group, from 111 finishers and 146 entrants, our best group result to date. We shared our start with a couple of other one design classes. 39th ISC overall, 664 finishers and 976 entrants, our best overall to date.
Mixed emotions, we still didn't win our class and we missed 2nd by only 3 seconds. In some respects, it was better missing 2nd than 1st. On the upside, a record time, group and overall result.
The day was exhilarating and rewarding. Back in Haslar, some repairs, mainsail to the doctor for top batten surgery. We opened a bottle of pop, donated by our very domesticated on board chef and seamster Richard. The evening saw a few beers disappear before everyone retired for a well earned rest.