5.15am is definitely too ear
ly to be getting up on a Saturday morning, especially when the second thing you hear after the alarm clock is the rain. The timing of the Round the Island Race is however determined by the tides which that morning dictated a 7.30am race start. Time and tide…
One of my colleagues owns and races a Farr 45, a racing yacht which generally has a crew of around 11. When he’s racing regatta-style against the Farr 45 fleet, every second counts and the crew is a permanent, professional (or semi-professional) and highly experienced bunch. I am none of those things but the RTIR has a bit more leeway so me and two other friends of the skipper were invited along more-or-less as railmeat. The 7.30am start is for the Class Zero boats, the largest and fastest. The overall number of competitors is around 1,800 boats so they all go off in classes, fastest first to avoid bigger boats carving through the pack.
And some of those bigger boats really are big. One of the more spectacular is Leopard, a 100 foot custom-built boat for a finance entrepreneur which holds the record for a monohull in the race. She’s not the fastest however – that will likely be one of the multi-hull boats, probably an extreme 40 which are the lightning fast racing catamarans.
The start line is a swarm of big boats maneuvering around the line to work out the precise point at which to cross and where they need to be to be at full speed over the line when the starting cannon goes off. The closer to the start, the more the boats concentrate and the whole thing feels like a series of alarmingly close misses. The skipper and professionals in the crew are however completely unfazed so it’s really just a question of staying out of the way and hanging off the rail when required.
We got a great start and were feeling pleased with ourselves when we hit a patch of zero wind and watched helplessly as the fleet sailed by. It seemed to last for ages – actually it was about 5 minutes – but it was certainly enough to leave us trailing a few of the competition.
Often the first leg up to the Needles is a series of tacks upwind. This time we were lucky and it was one long tack, hanging over the side while the navigator and tactician adjusted course and sails to catch each puff of wind. We watched the extreme 40s come flying past – they start a class behind the Zeros – heeling over on one hull and disappearing rapidly into the distance.
By the time we reached the Needles, the sun was out and layers were starting to be stripped off. 
There are 2 ways around the Needles. The safe way is a wide course avoiding a wreck just off the lighthouse. It is possible to go between the lighthouse and the wreck – the penalty for misjudging your line is however extremely high. We were still trailing so the shorter route was chosen. Done well, as the crew did it, is incredibly impressive as the spinnaker is raised at the same time and all of a sudden the Needles are disappearing rapidly astern and we’ve just passed one of the boats that took a lead on us after the start.
The next stretch to St Catherine’s Point, the southerly tip of the island, is downwind and in my 2 race experience of the RTIR often separates the fleet as boats choose to move towards or away from the shore looking for wind. This time we made the right call to stay out and, helped by continual adjustment to the spinnaker setting throughout the stage, had only one Farr 45 in front of us passing the lighthouse on the point.
After Ventnor, the first town on the Southeastern part of the island there is a wide bay with Shanklin at one end and Sandown at the other. Ahead we could see boats becoming becalmed and had to make the decision once again to go in or stay out. The leading Farr 45 ahead went out, we went in.
Initially this felt like the wrong decision as we saw the same buoy 3 times, twice as we drifted backwards on the tide and at this point the fact that we could see all the other boats having the same problems wasn’t a lot of comfort. Indeed, as we swung around on the few breaths of wind and the tide, rushing from one side of the boat to the other to try and create some way, we could see the rest of the fleet, an armada of sails, appearing on the horizon and bearing down on us.
Eventually however our persistence and route paid off and we cleared the bay, finding new wind just as the rest of the fleet began to hit the dead water at the other end of the bay. As we headed for the mark at the Eastern end of the island, we could see that we were gaining on the boats which had headed out to sea and were now comfortably ahead of the Farr 45 we had been chasing as we approached Shanklin.
Light winds again heading around the Eastern tip towards Ryde meant a lot of tacking and watching for gusts as we stayed inshore, continuing to gain ground on the boats further out, including Leopard which appeared closer to Chichester than the Island itself. Behind us the wind had died completely at the Eastern mark and we could see a huge log-jam of boats as the chasing fleet progressively arrived and became becalmed. A bit like those films of penguins huddled together in the Antarctic.
Passing Ryde we caught a strong breeze coming down the Solent and tacked briskly up towards the line just short of Cowes. We had a little race to the line with a 60 foot cruiser as we approached the line which we were pleased to win and crossed at about 4pm, comfortably the lead Farr 45 and well up in the Zero Class. On handicap we knew that we had no realistic chance of winning but it was overall a very pleasing result after a long day.
As we brought down the sails and motored into the Hamble, we could see the bulk of the fleet only just rounding the corner of the island at Ryde, still with an hour or more to go to the line.