Round The Island Race, 25 June 2011 – report by Bob Buchanan

Yacht’s name ‘Crack on’, Sadler 25

Skipper: Bob Buchanan

Crew: Hugh Hayward (owner) Patrick BeattBecky Goddard.

We all met up on the Friday night and had a meal in Shamrock Quay

After a few hours sleep we made an early start down Southampton water.

Our start time was 07.40 and we were in the last group to go. There were sixty six boats in our group. The wind was F5/6 south westerly. We got a good start and started tacking our way down the Solent. It was not long before we caught up to some boats in the next two classes up from us. Tacking was very tricky as we went though Hurst Point but with Paddy on the tiller he did an excellent job.

We turned at the lighthouse onto starboard tack and headed towards St Catherine’s point. We had full main and the number one Genoa up. The sea was very lumpy and we decided not to put the spinnaker up (also we didn’t see anyone else with one up)

After St Catherine’s we headed towards Bembridge, then up towards Ryde. From there we were close hauled for a few miles then we tacked towards the line. We had to go across the south finish line where we had a couple of hairy moments but crossed it in about 9.3/4 hours.

We came 16th out of 66 in our class and 268 overall.

After crossing the line we texted our position in first, our time, then the boat sail number in front of us then the sail number behind us. We carried on to Yarmouth where we managed to squeeze into a slot and raft up directly behind Spellbinder, they said they had to retire as their life raft suddenly deployed off St Catherine’s.

After a night in the Bugle we set off the next day for Portland to take the boat back. There was no wind and very foggy, visibility was about 200m.

At about 14.00hrs the fog lifted, the sun came out and the wind picked up, from the east. We pulled up the spinnaker and sailed all the way back to Portland. Portland was still covered in mist and the marina was not visible as we entered the harbour, so we had to use the G.P.S to get in.

With the boat tied up and back on her pontoon we had a bite to eat and a drink and went home after a very enjoyable weekend sailing.