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Diary Entry : 16:31 on Sun 4 Jun 2006
Friday morning, and my first day as skipper for Challenge. And I was to skipper my Global Challenge yacht, CB48, MeToYou.
I got down to the yacht early, with a list of small repair and preparation jobs running around in my head from a sleepless night before. Repair the Stailsail Halyard strop. Check the batton luff boxes in the main which I had bent on the day before. Run the reefing lines. Punch the course into Maxsea. Replace the halyard strop loop webbing with rope. Rerun the trysing lines the "Duncan" way. Clear the spares to the forward two man cabins.
Clearing the nigling job list and getting "my boat" into the shape I would be proud to invite guests on board built my confidence and any nerves soon gave way to excitement and enjoyment of the event. I left the crew, my mate Marlese, and crew Balaz and Maggie (who joined me at Cal's invitation), to finish preparing the boat and stowing the food and drinks for the weekend. Up to the Challenge Markee to meet the guests and escort them down to the yacht.
Friday was a day of training - most of it a bit contrived because of a lack of wind, but we were in reasonably good shape by the start of the mini race in the afternoon. The results were not great though - we were last - but at least we had a reasonable start and the crew seemed to be well on top of the task.
The Challenge yachts were drafted into forming an exclusion zone for the start of the Volvo Open 70 race from Portsmouth to Rotterdam, and so we had to anchor in a designated spot and had ringside seats for the charge past of the awesome machines.
Dinner was held at the Royal Corrintian Yacht Club after picking up a mooring buoy outside Cowes.
The race start at 06:40 in the morning went superbly well, with us across the line first (perhaps debatable with Samsung - 41, Duncan). The beam reach down to the Needles went quite well with just Cal able to sail over the top of us - bastard. I played it too conservatively around Bridge, giving it far too wide a berth and loosing a lot of ground. Then we had a fiasco with the pole. The wind came around to 110, and i decided to go with the port pole and get the Yaknee polled out. Went well, but I left the "skipper position" (aka at the backstay) to play bowman and get the pole organised. By the time I got back to the backstay, the wind had shifted 60 degrees and I had to return to the fordeck and get the whole lot down again. Three positions slipped by...
Around St Catherins Point we sailed around Pindar (#42, Jim) who sailed into a small wind hole. We slipped by them barely 50 meters away, unaffected by the hole. This fortold the patchy and bizzare wind conditions which were to be a feature of the remainder of the race. At times we were powering along at 8.5 knots looking like we were going to catch the leaders. And then we would be idling along at less than a knot watching them sail away again.
Bembridge Ledge was a parking lot for yachts, and we sat for an hour with zero wind and zero boat speed - along with a couple of hundred other yachts in very close proximity.
Finally a South Wester kicked in and we were able to crawl towards it and get going again. The final beat was exhilirating and although we came in last, we made up some impressive ground on Pindar over the last hour and ended only half a tack behind them.
Most importantly, the guests had a great time, and the day was a great success.
It will be a race to remember alongside the Global, RBI and Ireland.
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