We did it, and we came 5th in a class of 65; Sunsail 37’s – which I think was a pretty respectable result! It was my first time on the Isle, my first time racing, my first collision, and later my first time on a boat that had run aground (but thankfully this happened the day after the race)!
It was an early start | BBC Coverage on Saturday (4 a.m!) as we still had some spinnaker work to practice before the start – the wind had been too strong on our practice session on Friday to try this, although everything went well at first! The race started at 6 for the fast racing yachts; we were part of the 3rd staggered start at 6.20 and I have never seen anything quite like it! So many boats together at once made for some very, very close encounters – one boat collided with us and we were lucky – another boat which came close to sinking after a large racing yacht rammed them from behind, was forced to retire, whilst the Hugo Boss racing yacht (the one Lewis Hamilton was on) was later disqualified for a collision that snapped the oh-so-expensive carbon fiber mast of another fast racing yacht (can you see a pattern here?)!!
Regardless, we made good ground until we rounded the needles, where we looked to be in 2nd or 3rd position but we lost some time here when we managed to get the spinnaker totally wrong on the first hoist (it went so well in practice). Once we got it back up we then snapped a spinnaker sheet, lowered it again, got a new sheet attached and then raised it once more only to snap a halyard. Got the spinnaker back on board and hoisted it a 4th time once we replaced said halyard – ah!
We finally finished with a time of 8 hours 11 minutes, only 20 minutes after the winning boat! We had a great crew, from novices to pro’s and were lucky to get away with minimal injuries (a few cracked ribs for my dad after a bad fall, but he’s ok). I think it was the most awesome, tiring and exhilarating event I’ve ever taken part in… roll on next year!
You can see a summary of the event here.
My pictures | Official Pictures | Results
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