Friday 6 April 2012: James Boyd
Day 1: RORC Easter Challenge 6th-8th April 2012
A light, shifty, and bracingly cold wind from the north, combined with a substantial
tide made for challenging conditions on the opening day of the RORC Easter Challenge.
Toe in the Water on day 1 of the RORC Easter Challenge
Credit: James Boyd/www.thedailysail.com
Racing started on time at 1300 and with the wind rarely getting above 6 knots, the
tide was a vital factor, ebbing throughout the afternoon at more than 2 knots (and
due to increase with a 4.9m spring tide coming on Sunday).
"The tide was a pretty major factor, particularly at the starts and some of the
laylines in the second race," commented Luke McCarthy, Racing Manager and head Coach
at the British Keelboat Academy.
Based in Cowes, the BKA trains young sailors aged up to 24 to become professional
racing keelboat crew and is fielding five boats at the RORC Easter Challenge. This
involves 35 sailors, almost the entire BKA squad.
Biggest in the BKA fleet is the Farr 45 Kolga offered to the Academy by Niklas Zennström
and today the young sailors were racing with round the world legend Steve Hayles,
usually navigator for Niklas Zennström on his various Rán yachts. After racing today,
Kolga is sixth overall in IRC One, but her sistership Simon Henning's Alice is leader.
"It is great to have Steve Hayles from Rán Racing on the 45. He felt they were sailing
the boat pretty well," says McCarthy.
In addition to the BKA's three J/80s, they also sail on David Aisher's J/109 Yeoman
of Wight in IRC Three, on which Luke McCarthy is competing this weekend with a BKA
crew. After today's two races they are leading IRC Three. In race one they demolished
the opposition finishing more than six minutes ahead on corrected time and this
was despite being over at the start. "We always wanted to go right up the beat and
we piled in there and pushed hard right and then we just extended after that." In
the second race they (and a number of other boats) were involved in a big pile up
at the pin end of the start line and finished fourth.
McCarthy attributes this partly to the four weekends of training they have put in
over the last six weeks and also perhaps benefitting from their J/109 being rated
with slightly larger jibs than the six other J/109s racing here.
Today's second race in IRC 3 was won by the Corby 33 Salvo with the MAT 1010 Matilda
second, unusually both boats having skippers called Peter Morton, the latter currently
tied on points overall with Yeoman of Wight.
Another significant presence on the water at this event is the biggest boat in the
fleet, the dark grey Farr 52 that has previously been known as Bear of Britain and
subsequently Bob. Earlier this year owners Tony Hayward, Sam Laidlaw and Rob Gray
donated the boat to Toe in the Water, the charity which uses competitive sailing
as a vehicle to re-inspire injured servicemen and women.
At the RORC Easter Challenge Toe in the Water is being steered by Brian Thompson,
who most recently set a new record aboard the 40m long trimaran Banque Populaire
for being the fastest to sail non-stop round the world. On this their average speed
for the 45 day long voyage was 26.5 knots, so today's racing perhaps lacked a little
pace in comparison. "I am steering the boat and you are doing all the very fine
details, upwind and downwind, so it is a different sport. And it is very nice to
sail with those guys," says Thompson, who also has fellow Vendee Globe skipper Dee
Caffari in the afterguard - both are Toe In The Water ambassadors.
This is the first time Thompson has sailed the boat, while the crew has only been
out on two selection weekends. Among the Toe in the Water crew are volunteers to
the charity but also four injured servicemen including Lance Corporal Steve Palmer
of the Royal Engineers who lost both his legs in Afghanistan, Lance Corporal Chris
Herbert of the Yorkshire Regiment who has one leg amputated in Iraq and Private
Metiisela Ladiniwasa, RSU Germany and Private Chris Skelton of 23 Pioneer Regatta
who have severe lower limb injuries.
Despite the lack of time on board, Toe In The Water is lying second overall, tied
on points with Alice.
"Today was great," said Thompson. "The two practice starts were fun. We had one
good one and one bad one. Our second race was a blinder - everything went really
well. We were almost seven minutes ahead - we seemed to be lucky with the shifts,
but it was incredibly shallow. We had 0.3m under the keel doing 10 knots with the
spinnaker up with the tide behind us. And 20m after crossing the finish line we
went hard aground. We had to heel the boat over 20deg and churn through the mud
otherwise we'd still be there..."
Approaching low tide during race two, a number of boats went aground on the Brambles
Bank, including the J/133 Jeronimo and the Farr 45 Espresso Martini, who retired
from the race, while Tonnerre, like Toe in the Water also grounded after the finish.
In IRC Two Jim Macgregor's Poole-based Elan 410 Premier Flair leads, while in IRC
Four A Grant Gordon posted a pair of bullets aboard his J/97 Fever while Nigel Biggs
had a similar result in IRC Four B on his Checkmate as Robert Larke has aboard J2X
in the J/80s.
ENDS/....
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