It was Arcsine’s 4th time on the start line and we were all keen and prepared for a race with many wind changes. So much thought was given to navigation and weather reports but also how much water shall we take (I began to wish we’d gone for a watermaker!), how many dinners, what colour shirts, etc;
Who put all those extra choc bars onboard?
After a little bit of confusion at the Start we had a good exit from the Solent, tacking on shifts and making the best of the tides. As the wind increased towards Hurst the mainsheet traveller cleat fell apart so whilst bouncing through Hurst we managed to find a replacement nut and get it bolted back(so it does pay to have the spares!) and made good progress passed St Alban’s, but then the big decision-Offshore or inshore?
I was sure the wind would not be sufficient to allow us to tack close into Portland Bill even if Weymouth Sailing Club members wanted to give us a wave!
Having sort out some flatter water and less tide in the Bay (essential for eating our fantastic dinner prepared by our Italian crew members,) we tacked out before the Shambles then sufficiently south to avoid Portland Bill overfalls and stronger adverse tides. We thought we were doing well as we were surrounded by much faster boats.
We knew there would be some big wind shifts so we aimed to be on the inside of the bends. That put us in the lead or 2nd till Lands End, if you want more detail it is still possible to re-run the tracker on the www.rorc.org Fastnet page.
On our 2nd night at sea we experienced some fairly windy conditions with very confused seas, but by now we were tired enough to sleep our full 3 hours when off watch. We lost a couple of places as we crossed the Celtic Sea, but we did some tacks in light and shifty winds as we approached the Fastnet Rock from along the Irish coast, cross tacking several boats all faster than us most in class 2 and even one lonely one from our class 3! When we (unlike those with satellite phones) are making the 170 nautical miles crossing we had no information on the fleet or the weather so we were pleased to see when daylight came that we were surrounded by Class 2 boats and we were keeping up with them.
We then celebrated the text message from Steve Dadd telling us we were in 1st position with some great sausage and bacon.
We had a very, very close rounding of the Rock in the dark, discussion between Anthony below on the nav table and Kathy on the helm resulted in the crew commenting of Kathy having nerves of steel or being mad and Anthony very relieved when he came up from below to see the white water receding!
We popped the Asymmetric and enjoyed a lovely sail to Pantaenious spreader buoy, but soon after the gybe we had to drop the kite as the wind was too close, this was the story all the way down the Celtic Sea but we worried as other yachts were able to sail closer to the wind with their flatter Asymetric/code zeros.
Next land mark, Bishops Rock lighthouse.
We again approached in the dark and spent a short while worrying as we lost the wind; maybe we were in the lee of St Mary’s as the wind backed around to the North, but from what we could see of a couple of yachts to the South inside of the bend still paid off.
The wind gods dealt us another bad hand when 12 miles short of Plymouth, the wind died. We had to work very hard inching our way toward the finish line. We finally crossing very close to the lighthouse just after 9pm. Although disappointed this was still the fastest Fastnet time Arcsine had achieved.
We finished 5th in class 3A, 7th in class3, first British yacht in Class, and retained the Maite de Arambalza trophy for highest placed female skipper.
You can see a video on youtube, Arcsine in Fastnet 2011, http://www.youtube.com/user/calduckworth#p/a/u/0/XZG9qRx2erU and on Yachting Experiences group page on Facebook.
Arcsine and I (Yachting Experiences Ltd) are now back running training etc from Southampton and sometimes Weymouth, (Arcsine’s main berth in 2012 will be Weymouth) pop down and see us.
Kathy Claydon, Rocco Franco, Massimo Granata, David Stopard, Caleb Duckworth, Alfonso Lepori, Filipe Carvalho and Anthony Hinton
Submitted on 1st October 2011