Five of us, Chris, Matt, Rod (RCH), Nick and myself Hannah were taken off the Club pontoon on the mighty Boomerang by Ray Crouch (part-owner) at 6am.
We decided to start on the mainland end of the line and after a few clearing tacks were able to beat down to the Hurst Narrows in quite a clear lane. A lot of boats elected for the Island shore which looked really busy, and by the Needles Channel we could only identify Andy Robert’s Jin Tonic, the ISC helpfully having dispensed with group flags!
We went through the gap, which felt very flat but mostly lonely, most boats electing to go outside the wreck. The weather conditions were sunny, and gusting up to 20 knots and we hoisted the smaller symmetric kite. It was a fantastic gybing run down to St Cats, but we could see that there didn’t seem to be many boats ahead of us; one of our owners whatsapped to say they we were beating all of the boats in the 2 divisions ahead of us and most of Division 1A as well! (It was a good thing we didn’t have time to read this till later).
I received a glancing blow from the boom in one of the gybes (should have listened harder) , and luckily I and all my teeth survived the impact.
At St Cats we had to drop the kite, get round and then re-hoist ( pity the head was attached to the pole!) so another re-hoist later, we set off again gybing along the coast to Dunnose Point to keep out of the tide and the steep waves off shore In a gybe, Matt, the bow person smacked himself between the eyes with the end of the pole (there was some blood he cried a bit,but the sunglasses were the main victim). In another he poked a hole in the main with the pole end during a larger roll: Chris had to stick the patches on both sides; there was no time for lunch!
Unfortunately during one gybe we snapped the boom at the kicker with a very large bang off Ventnor, it could have been the end of our race. Down the kite came again.
Matt, held by Nick, hung at the end of the boom to disattach the clew while Chris held the main with a spinnaker sheet attached and Rod held the broken end. We finally got it off, stowed the boom below, sheeted on the main, hoisted the Chicken Shoot and restarted; our highest speed of 16.3 kts was achieved without a boom (booms are very overrated!) There were still very few boats ahead of us and we were making good progress so we decided to carry on ( and it was the only way home as Boomerang only has a tiny outboard!) Beating upwind from the Forts to the Finish with a main sheet and a cascade purchase system attached to the transom which needed moving from side to side at every tack took 2 people with the helmsman, so not a quick manoeuvre when coming up to the line amongst all the 50 footers! Ray didn’t fall off the boat (twice) but did managed to cut his face during one of these unorthodox tacking manoeuvres!
To carry on turned out to be one of our best decisions of the day: Winsome, the winner of our division finally overtook us in Osborne Bay and we came 2nd on corrected time and 5th in our Group, 36th overall ( probably not bad for 1/2 a race without a boom!)
We were all exhausted, and very disappointed not to finish higher, but never mind,we all really enjoyed the day with great team work in the face of adversity. Where do I sign for next year?
Hannah Neve
