Juno: sailing round the rock
Charles Whittam, skipper of Juno, an X34, entered and completed the Fastnet Race 2011. He said entering the Fastnet was just a bit like having a baby, a lot of excitement at the beginning followed by nine months of patient preparation - and then when you're in the middle of it, questioning your sanity about ever wanting to do it in the first place.
Motivation
For Charles, it was either to race, or have an adventure, or a bit of both. He started sailing in various sizes of dinghies: "Without lids, bunks, galleys, or places to stow a bottle of gin", so after an interlude in the middle to do some family cruising, he has now returned to racing, this time in something bigger.
Preparation
Firstly, the boat has to be eligible to enter the Fastnet. It's an ISAF Category 2 race, and the audience got a whistle-stop tour of SSS, STIX, AVS and minimum ratings. The X34 has an AVS (angle of vanishing stability) of 135 degrees. By comparison, some popular cruisers with greater space are less seaworthy: the Bavaria 36 has an AVS of 121. Charles commented, "You pay a price for all that extra space below decks in the marina, but it depends what you want to use your boat for."
There are some extra items of safety equipment needed to take part in any Category 2 race: an EPIRB, offshore liferaft, storm jib and trysail, an AIS transponder and a second manual bilge pump. For the Fastnet there was also a tracker unit. It didn't cost anything, but had to be given back. "If I'd failed to, it would have cost £700," said Charles. "But as they said, they know where it is (until the batteries go flat)."
RORC racing entries are all done online, "If you struggle to book a ticket online for the laying up supper, you won't want to enter the Fastnet."
The team
The Juno team, which consisted of Kate Newman, Mark Blunden, Graham Broadway, Charles Whittam, Seth Cooley, Simon Hughes and Mark Smith had all done at least 300 miles of RORC offshore racing in the 12 months before the race. The race requirements are that at least half the crew should have done the qualifying miles. Five of them had also done the ISAF Offshore Safety course together and there were two medical doctors on board and three others with First Aid qualifications. They practiced Man Overboard drills and Emergency Steering and defined and documented the agreed processes (read about Emergency Steering tests here). Charles commented that they discussed whether, if they lost someone overboard, would they risk the lives of other crew by putting them in a liferaft to try and recover the MOB, "That question raised some interesting philosophical issues and discussions."
For the Fastnet, the crew operated a 4 hour on/ 4 hour off watch system, with two dog watches and the skipper outside the watch system. For qualifying races, they had experimented with different systems, but they needed a system which provided a sustained effort over five days. They also had personal, dedicated stowage for individual kit, with a pool of wet oilies and boots in the forepeak.
Navigation
Graham Broadway was the lead navigator and equipment included charts and tidal data (both paper and electronic); photocopies of relevant parts of the pilot books for the Scillies (those pilot books are very heavy) and a broadband dongle which enabled them to download GRIB files at least once a day. There was also a transistor radio for LW shipping forecasts (and the cricket!) plus routing software (Expedition).
Execution
Part of the atmosphere of the Fastnet race is the range of boats taking part, from sleek modern multihulls, to gaff-rigged old timers. Juno set off from Port Hamble on Sunday 14 August and headed to the start with a foul tide in the Needles Channel. With a southwesterly they hugged the convergent, Island, shore until heading through Hurst Narrows the tide was with them and the wind strength increased.
The next question was, would they or wouldn't they make it past Portland Bill before the tide turned? They didn't and headed south to keep out of the strongest tide round the Bill. By Monday they were across Lyme Bay, heading past Start Point and expecting the wind to back to the south west and ease. Past the Lizard (too close) and Land's End (not close enough) the plot across the Celtic Sea showed some interesting dog legs which, in hindsight, Charles said were avoidable: "Prediction programmes are only as good as the data you feed into them, and in retrospect it was probably not a good idea to leave the rhumb line as far as we did."
As Juno approached the rock, the wind died and it took them 8 hours to cover the next 30 miles - and then it was downhill all the way, or supposedly. With light and fickle winds, by the time they reached the Lizard, Juno was surrounded by 50 other boats. Finally, on Friday they had just four miles left, but the wind had died completely, the ebb tide was coming out of Plymouth and Charles commented that it, "Was the most stressful part of the race."
At 0230, after 4 and a half days of sailing, they tied up and went to the pub. Then went to sleep, tidied up the boat… and went to the pub again.
Reflections (statistics)
- Rhumb line 608nm
- Distance logged: 635nm
- Time 4d 14h 31m 39s
- Average boat speed: 5.75 kts
- Max boat speed 10.9kts
- Max TWS 29.2 kts
- Improvement needed to win
- Class 4 : 8.3%
- Overall : 31.3% - But Class 4 winner was 13th overall
Reflections - on balance
Good: crew/watch system; tactics from start to Lizard and Fastnet to finish; food quality; weather information
Less good: Tactics from Lizard to Fastnet; too much water; too much food.
Would he do it again? "Yes, with the right crew, absolutely."
Gallery
