With all the nice weather we've been having, it took me considerably longer to get back from St. Nazaire to Cherbourg than it took 'Raging Bee' to get to Madeira, where she finished with a superb second place behind Jean-Pierre Kelbert – Mr JPK himself, who wasn't going to let anyone finish ahead of him, even in one of his boats! The 'McDo' team finished a respectable twelfth out of 58 finishers. Congratulations to YCC, and very well done Loulou and Titi from 'Raging Bee' fans at WSC.
Ironic that the first wind for a week was the much-forecast gale at the weekend, tail-end of a hurricane; Monday wasn't much better, so I spent some time in the Naval Archives, then joined my friend Wilfried on 'Adele' for his afternoon tour of the Rade to have a look at the sea - not promising! Tuesday looked OK, so I left Cherbourg early on Tuesday morning to get the end of the ebb on the French coast. When you find you're sailing out of the petite Rade at 4am, you know there's going to be enough wind to cross!
All went well, in spite of the remnants of a westerly swell not quite matching the SW 15 knots of breeze – then, between the traffic zones, the top of the genoa parted and the sail began to slide down the furler. First thing was to get it down and on the deck; then check for ropes over the side and put the engine on to keep going while I had a think about what to do.
Deciding it was worth having a go at trying to repair the sail, I hand-stitched a length of sail tie to the top of the genoa to make a loop for the halyard – ten stitches took me over an hour, but the finished result looked quite workable (see photo), so I turned downwind and spent some time struggling to hoist the sail on a spinnaker halyard, then sheeted in and came back on course and was able to turn the engine off. ' Pourvu que ca dure', as Napoleon's mum said – provided it lasts...
Which it did - all the way home, in spite of the strong wind warning which duly delivered 6-7 in the afternoon; this, combined with the very strong ebb (113% coefficient), meant for a wet afternoon as I steered to try to take the pressure off the genoa as much as possible in conditions that got rougher as the afternoon went on. Being on the spinnaker halyard, the genoa of course wouldn't furl, so it was keep it up till it went again; the great thing is that on that ebb you need to keep bearing away northwards to get up into the bay. Worrying about the sail in the gusts, it felt very slow, though it was impressive to watch Portland getting closer as I shot up from off St Albans at about 8 knots.
Finally, in the flat water off Chequers, I could lower the sail and lash it, and then motor gently up to the harbour, grateful for having done that badge in the Cubs where you had to do sewing!
Steve Fraser
Cruiser Class Captain
