Graham Broadway's blog

The next event in the racing calendar for Juno's qualification for the Fastnet was the RORC Cowes to St Malo race which started on Friday 8 July. A number of us were down on the boat on Thursday to prepare for the race. During Thursday night the rain lashed down on the decks and the wind howled through the rigging causing the boat to heel over even though she was tucked snuggly in Port Hamble marina.

Last Saturday, the 25 June I competed on board Juno in the Round the Island Race and immediately (well, after a short break for a couple of glasses of fizzy wine and strawberries) travelled from Port Hamble to Hamble Point to join Michael Forbes Smith on Aeolus, a chartered HR 36. There would be four of us on board, the other two being Adrian Waller and Julie Rosenberg.

Over the late May bank holiday weekend Juno took part in the JOG offshore race to Deauville. We normally sail with a crew of seven but this weekend we were down to six crew. Then one crew member found that the traffic at Hindhead on the Friday before bank holiday was so heavy that he would not be able to reach Hamble in time for the start!

Juno took part in the RORC Cervantes Challenge held over the early May bank holiday weekend. I am usually on board Juno on the Friday afternoon but this Friday was my wife's birthday and so I drove down after an evening meal in a local resturant which meant I arrived in Hamble at 2300 and was assigned the blow-up mattress on the cabin sole, all the berths being occupied by snoring crew.

After several weekends of practice sails Easter was the start of Juno's competitive season. Instead of the usual Easter cross channel race with JOG to Cherbourg we opted for some "round the cans" racing in the Solent. This is in preparation of the Fastnet race later this year.

January & February.

My season started with the Fast Cruise Series (in fact it never stopped) by chartering yachts for the January event to Bucklers Hard and the February event to Yarmouth.  The Yarmouth cruise was especially entertaining as it took part on the same weekend that storms lashed the French coast causing considerable damage in places such as La Rochelle.  Fortunately the Solent caught the very edge of the depression but it still gave us some interesting situations.

The recent JOG race to St Peter Port was a game of two halves or at least a weekend of two halves.  Once again I was in the crew of Juno, an X34.

Juno has just taken part in the JOG Salona Illingworth Challenge race from Cowes to La Trinité-sur-Mer in Southern Brittany, a distance of about 340 miles. 

Juno was entered in the RORC/JOG race to St Malo over the weekend of the 2nd to 4th July but the race turned out to be very disappointing.

As the Jog season starts we are republishing Graham Broadway's notes about life aboard a racing yacht. This weekend whilst JOG runs the first race of their season - the Nab Tower Race. Juno  is running practice sessions. We hope to carry an article from Graham next week about what to do when the rudder drops off.