The Fastnet is done and what a great race, the first event of this season with proper breeze and a big fleet.
I was sailing Keith Willis also from Lymington. We set off with close to 80 boats on the start line and a beat out of Douarnenez bay in medium breeze. We had great leg sticking close to the Northern shore. Next we cracked off and headed north inside Oussant Island and main land France, just beating the tide.
It started to rain and was very obviously the start of predicted low pressure front, meaning big breeze was close. As night fell the we began the beat across the English Channel and the breeze kept building. As the wind increased we took more and more reefs until it got the max of around 34 knots, with very typical English Channel short step waves. Not comfy in a downwind 21ft rocket.
We had a few breakages in the night, the main halyard block exploded, we got a rip in the main sail head which meant we had to take reefs earlier than I would have normally liked to and the biggest problem was snapping the jib halyard fitting and losing the halyard inside the rig. I went up the mast to try and resolve the problem but there was nothing I could do, so we ended up using the fractional spinnaker halyard to hoist the jib. This worked sufficiently but crossed over the PBO rigging and had potential to chafe through the forestay and drop the rig if we did not change sides during every tack. This made tacking a very slow and long process, drop the jib, untie the halyard, tack, re-tie and hoist. Not racing stuff. Due to this we were pushing the tacks as long as possible, this meant we went to far North and missed a valuable wind shift, so in real terms sailing more mile than we had to and giving away a lot of positions at Wolf rock off Lands End. Unfortunately this changed our whole race, which we didn’t find out until later.
We entered the Irish Sea and headed for Fastnet, the wind slowly shifted and dropped, to allow us to go full sail, to zero and finally the spinnaker. We approach the rock in light breeze, rounded and went back to the jib before the wind shut down. We managed to keep up some pace unlike many boat around and claw back many positions. The wind shifted and allowed us to put up the Spi again and was due to build. As it was so light all we could do was head south, rather than SE to sail round the wind hole. We were happy with this as forecast was for the wind to build back to 30 knots from the NW, which would allow us to keep the Spi up all the way home and fly back.
The breeze did build but only got round as far as North. We had some great hours sailing in perfect mini condition, 26 knots breeze, big kite, surfing waves 16 knots boat speed. But the forecast let us down and went back to the NE and dropped meaning we struggled to get back to rum line and hold the Spi.
As we got to French side of English Channel the breeze dropped and we got ready for our final night. I had seen a group of 5 boats ahead in the distance and made it my mission to get home before them.
The return course went outside on the West of Oussant before heading back into the bay of Dourenez. With the code five then zero we managed to get all 5 boats through the night but it did involve a lot of hard sailing, patients and no sleep!
The last 15 miles in the bay turned into a light wind beat, and finally less than 5 miles away from home with the finish in sight the wind shut off completely. We ended up very slowly creeping towards the line and finally crossed t around 9am Friday morning, with a strange sail configuration with the main and jib goose-winged on the opposite tack to catch the breeze.
When we got back there were more boats home than I hoped. I went and I started up the race tracker and analysing the race straight away. The long tack north in the big breeze had cost us dearly. Not just the extra miles on the corner but the knock on effect was that we just missed all the good breeze, the boats just ahead, had good wind all the way to Fastnet and had rounded and got the forecast big downwind conditions all the way back.
A good lesson to be learnt! The best news for me after the Fastnet is that I have now completed more than necessary mileage for the qualification process. So as soon as I get confirmation from Classe Mini I can start preparing for the Azores on the 1st of August.
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