JP Morgan Asset Management Round the Island Race 2010
One More Knot : 4th in Class
Crew: Phil, Darrell, Glenn, Drew, Kevan, Phil B, Joe, Robin
One More Knot was 2nd in class last year and our aim was to improve! With over 1700 yachts in this year's race, it was once again quite an honour to be in the world's largest yacht race. This year, we were in ISC clase 5A. We were probably the smallest boat in our class and were up against some considerably bigger (albeit more cruisy) boats. Our power to weight ratio would help in very light airs if boats couldn't get to hull speed. If we had some technical upwind or downwind work, we would be more agile than the bigger boats. We also know that we have been able to get One More Knot to really point well this year. However, fast reaching conditions would be a real challenge for us, the longer boats would have an advantage due to their longer waterlines and higher max speed. On handicap, we were fortunate enough to be handicapped as the slowest boat in our class. This meant that we couldn't be overtaken by the dreaded handicap adjustment. However, the difference between the top and the bottom of the class was a measly 0.7%, although in 10 hours that is about 216 seconds between the fastest and slowest in class.
Having looked at the class entry list, we had worked out that there was no particular boat that we had to fear. Sure, there were some boats that had a decent record. With One More Knot's record of being in the top 10 in class over the last 5 years, we were as competitive as any of the others.
We know this race is long and varied. Quite often, each leg can have its own character. By the time we get to the end, fatigue can set in, tempers fray and we're not quite as competitive as we would otherwise be.
Thursday clearout
As usual, Phil was down on Thursday giving the boat some TLC. About 4 trolley loads came off this year.
Practice on Friday
Crew: Phil, Glenn, Phil B, Darrell, Kevan
Our basic plan was to go to Cowes for lunch and a debrief, having practiced a few things on the way.
As we left Haslar, the wind was very light. Once outside we started sailing as soon as we could. It was slow progress in the light airs and against the tide. We sailed over towards Ryde sand to go up on the Island side. On the way, we experimented with the Asymmetric, looking to see how high we could point. We found that by easing the tack line, we could hold the kite a lot higher. In about 4 to 6 knots of breeze we were able to get up to about 65 true. However, if the luff curled we had to bear away a lot to get it to fill again. We ghosted through a number of race fleets and past their committee boats whilst they were waiting for the wind to fill in.
We took the opportunity to check the depths off Castle Point near Cowes. When we touched the bottom we figured we'd got close enough! As it turned out, the info was useful to us in the race.
Eventually, we got to Cowes for lunch ... but the Cowes Yacht Haven wouldn't let us in. The marina was empty, but they said all the places we pre-booked, "there was a race on tomorrow, didn't you know?" We wanted a 90 minute stopover for lunch and debrief, but they were convinced that either we would stay or that 200 boats would arrive before we left! Or maybe, they just wanted a "Job's worth" hat.
Instead, we looked at our options and decided we would eat some of tomorrows lunch today, on board. So we went back out into the Solent to find a quiet spot to drop the main, eat and debrief the morning session before we had another go for the afternoon. On the way back out from Cowes, the leading lights and the start transit were being displayed. So we mapped out the startline precisely with a set of waypoints along the line. We know from experience that it is very difficult to judge the line on the the water with all of the other boats around. The far end of the line is about 1 mile away and the transit is just too far away to be able to see properly. Once we had the waypoints in the bag, we dropped the main, turned the engine off and settled down for lunch just south of the Bramble bank. While drifting we were over taking boats with spinnakers, much to our amusement!! Remarkable tidal differences in just a few hundred yards. A bit more practice and back to watch England vs Algeria on the big screen. It was dismal, Phil packed it in at half time and went to bed early for an early start the next day. The rest of the crew managed to watch it all but confessed that giving in at half time was the right thing to do.
Round the Island Race 2010
Saturday 19th June 2010
Crew: Phil, Darrell, Glenn, Drew, Kevan, Phil B, Joe, Robin
High water at Portsmouth was 0720 BST which meant an early start. The race had an early start, 0610, and we would be under orders at 0600.
Alarms at 0345 saw a few of the crew emerge immediately. A few had a more leisurely approach, but no rush. Off to the Camber to pick up the final 2 crew, Drew and Robin at just gone 4am ... yawn. We were very pleased to welcome Robin (Commodore of the Portsmouth Sailing Club) on board for the first time.
The tide was low, so we went the long way around out of the harbour and up the Swashway. A bit of brekky was eaten on the way in preparation for the main event. We got to Cowes in reasonable time and found ourselves converging with some other boats in our start near Prince Consort buoy, off Cowes. There was a light and fickle northerly breeze. It was going to be a spinnaker start!
We studied the tide and elected to start about 1/3rd of the way up the line from Cowes. Looking for good tide, short route and decent wind angle. By the time our fleet would start, the tide would be pushing the fleet strongly over the line, at about 2.5 knots. That's about 1.25m/s, so 5 minutes before the start, when the engine would be turned off, we would be washed about 400m towards the line without doing anything! Interestingly, this is the first year that we have started at Prince Consort, normally we have elected to start closer to the northern end of the line.
After watching a few fleets start it came around to our turn. We had been biding our time by sailing against the tide, using Prince Consort as a marker, some half a mile from the line. We found that there were fewer boats being caught out by being too close to the line, maybe this is where the more experienced racers come. With about 3 minutes to go, abeam of Prince Consort we had 0.3nm to the line. The crew were already in race mode. The timer had been started accurately. Everyone was quiet unless there was something to be said, we could hear the VHF clearly. Phil was at the helm, with Phil B counting down every 15 seconds. Darrell on the main and Glenn on the genoa were controlling the speed. We vectored in on our chosen start waypoint (one of the ones we made the day before). As we approached the line with a minute to go, we were confident of our position. On the water, we looked good too. There were a few other boats up near the line but most of the fleet were hanging back as usual.
With a few seconds to go, we increased boat speed and headed towards the line. The cannon was fired from Cowes. Looking up and down, there were half a dozen other boats who we thought had a good start too.
One More Knot, GBR7563T, blue and yellow spinnaker makes a great start.
Asante, Maxi 1100, cerise and turquoise spinnaker also had a good start and we were close all the way around.
Picture courtesy of Kevin Small, Lieghtonian on flickr
Then the VHF crackled into life "there are individual recalls in force for fleet 8". Ooops, was that us? There were a couple of boats in front so we weren't the first. A few minutes later the VHF confirmed that there were 2 boats over the line at the start and we were not one of them.
As we rounded Egypt Point about 200m north of the Gurnard cardinal, we were in clear air, well in front of the body of the rest of our start fleet of 164 boats. There were a couple of boats to leeward and about 4 to windward who also had a good start. It was hard to tell, where we were exactly, probably 2nd or 3rd in our start. Our start included 6 different classes, so it we didn't know if we were leading our class.
As the fickle wind blew across the course, some boats gained relative to others. As the puffs came across gains would be reversed. We were running in about position 2 to 6 for our start. The front runners were getting away from the pack due to their clear air. Each of the leading yachts had the freedom to find clear air and choose the part of the tide that they wanted. The front line was spread right across the western arm of the Solent. We were trying to look ahead to gather clues from the fleet ahead. In the end, we chose a relatively middle route, staying in the deep water and strongest tide.
The breeze was filling in slightly as the race developed. As we approached Newton Creek, we caught the tail end of the preceeding fleet. Initially, it wasn't a problem. Then we made a small mistake as we attempted to pass a large boat without a spinnaker. Our course took us to leeward of it, but we were too close and got slowed to their speed. We recognised the situation quickly and bore away to increase the gap before we made our move again, this time in clearer air.
As we approached the Hurst narrows, we were in about 3rd place of our start fleet. All the leaders went to the north side of the channel for the best tide and clearer air. The whole area was a convergent zone, with a mix of the leaders of our fleet, plus plenty from several fleets in front. The wind had picked up and the speed was up to a tide assisted 11 knots over the ground. We were quite active on board trying to stay in clear air and to plot our way forward through the fleet.
The Needles were coming up .... fast!!! The fleet needed to bear away onto a deep run to get down to the corner. However, the strong SW going tide could easily take the fleet well to the west. We wanted to avoid battling back against the tide once we had made the turn, so being cautious we elected to cut in towards the Needles early. The 2 leading boats that we had identified from our start continued, staying in the stronger tide on the north side of the Needles channel.
We could see through the Needles that there appeared to be quite strong but gusty wind on the southern side. It also appeared that everyone had dropped their kites. The dialogue about dropping the kite became quite intense.
It was clear that we were one of only a few boats aiming to going inside the Varvassi. We were very active in order to make sure that a boat inside us didn't stop our progress and take away our short cut option. We ended up on a dead run and in danger of gybing. Boat speed had slowed and we were being carried towards the wreck by the tide. We heaved a sigh of relief as the needles light house and coast guard station transit swapped sides. At 07:49 we had completed the first leg, taking just 1 hour and 39 minutes.
The jib was deployed and we dropped the kite on the gybe. Our track shows that we were inside the wreck by only a boat length on this occasion, maybe a bit too close for comfort. However, I think we can justify our claim to be first around the Needles from our start fleet. The others had stayed north and then ended up rounding considerably more to the west.
Under white sails, we were able to start our leg towards St Cats on the southern extremity of the Isle of Wight. Initally we set off to windward of most of the fleet. By staying out of the worst of the tide, our GPS showed 6 knots over the ground.
Up ahead, we could see the boats inshore sailing into trouble, some had even gybed to come back away from the cliffs. We bore away hoping to avoid the worst of the mayhem, we were by now means the closest, but eventually the wind failed on us too. Our speed dropped to below 3 knots over the ground for a very frustrating 10 minutes as we desperately tried to find a way to move forward. Many boats were in close proximity and judging by the language they weren't too happy either. One boat was exclaiming "We want your women!!!" to another boat, as the fleet drifted. As far as we could tell, no female crew changed vessels.
Eventually, we made some progress and started to head with decent speed towards St Cats. It was a fast beam reach, good for a fast time, but not good for us in a class with bigger boats. Phil handed the helm to Phil B and Darrell handed the mainsheet to Robin. The plan was to make the substitions to allow us to be fresher in the later parts of the race. Phil then got something to eat before joining the crew on the rail. It was unbelievably relaxing up there!!! The view was great as the fleet charged off to St Cats.
There was some dialogue about the course to steer and how much to stay out of the tide. The tradeoffs were a slight longer course but out of the tide in the north. However, the wind might also be more flukey under the shore. Our track shows our course took us to about 0.7m off the Brook Ledges. There were a good few boats inshore of our track, but the majority were offshore.
As we passed the Atherfield Ledges we debated how far to go inshore in the Chale bay. We were watching a number of boats who were closer to the shore. It appeared that they were possibly gaining marginally, but the density of boats didn't look very attractive.
As the fleet converged towards St Cats, Phil took the helm again.
We hung around just on the outside. We picked up some favourable tide on the final part of the leg to St Cats. There seemed to be a glut of boats 200m inshore, and they all stood stll as the breeze once again failed.
On the outside we quickly put up the asymmetric, this helped for about 2 minutes, but suddenly the breeze kicked in again. The fleet right on the rocks started to streak away, those closest to the island first. Everyone took their turn as we quickly switched back to white sails.
After another frustrating 4 minutes we eventually got underway again. The wind filled and we were off. We were due south of St Cats lighthouse at 09:55 am !!! We had wondered what time we may have been at this point. I think we were about an hour before our best estimate! It had only taken 3 hours 45 minutes from the start.
With the full main and #2 beam reaching we found ourselves overpowered in the overfalls. One More Knot was difficult to control. We put as much into twist into the sails as we could, but OMK still rounded up frequently in the lumpy sea. We persevered for a bit with ever increasing frustration. We were about half a mile offshore. Our attempts to get closer were thwarted by other boats and our inability to point without rounding up. We considered a headsail change, but then rounded up and tacked involuntarily. We decided to stick with it as the tack would take us closer inshore to Dunnose point. Something that we were entirely happy about.
This then set us up for a fetch across Sandown Bay. There were very few boats closer to the island than us. Most were further offshore. The flatter water helped our progress considerably.
As the fleet started to converge towards Bembridge, Phil made a small error. His GPS at the helm was using a safe waypoint for Bembridge, about 0.3m offshore from the actual mark. We had eased the sheets slightly too early. Once the error was realised we had to tack onto the lay line about 400m from the mark. At least we didn't have to barge our way in on port.
We rounded Bembridge Ledge at 12:06. It was just afternoon. If the wind didn't fail, we'd be in for an early finish.
We then had an offset beat to get to Ryde Sand. We elected to stay as far inshore as we could to avoid the adverse tide and pick up eddies. There were a few other boats that we kept cross tacking with. We passed just outside of the exclusion markers for the Seaview moorings. We were well inside the beacon post near No Mans Land fort and this year passed just outside the Ryde Sands marker post.
Robin's RIB "Crime Pays" had found us, driven by Rick and populated with folk from the Portsmouth Sailing club. They buzzed around for a while and took some great photos.
One More Knot, GBR7563T, beating from Bembridge to Ryde
Pictures by Angela and Jim Page, Popeyejim on flickr
Emma ... where are your pics??
From here it was a drag race to the finish. We arc'd south to stay over Mother Bank to avoid the worst of the tide.
As we approached Castle Point, we stayed as inshore as we dared. There were 2 Sunsail yachts just ahead and inshore of our line. One of them obviously touched the bottom. Our soundings from the day before help us understand the depth of water here.
We crossed the finish line at 14:19:08, giving us an elapsed time of 8 hours 9 minutes and 8 seconds. Not quite our personal best which is just under 8 hours.
We claimed 4th in Class, behind "Eternity of Hamble" Bowman 42, "Adelie Too" Sunfast 37 and "Evening Spirit" Dehler 37. In our weeney (in this company) 34 foot Elan 333, we were about 16 minutes from a class victory. There was a 7 minute margin either way, to 3rd or 5th!
All in all, we're happy we put in a good effort on a day that favoured a longer waterline. But still a little disappointed that we couldn't claim a class win this year, oh well ... watch out next year. The full results show 4th in Class from 39; 15th on our start from 129 and 170 overall from 869.
So by the time we had made our declaration and turned the boat around it was only 2:30pm. We asked Robin what time the bar shut at the Portsmouth Sailing Club. His answer was "Not before we get back". He duly made the appropriate call so that once ashore we could get the rib across and enjoy a few beers in our home club.
On the way back we monitored the results via the Internet. Not only had we seen our result, but we also observed Symphony's. They came up as first in class.
We returned to the home berth and tied up, sorted things out and clambered into Robin's RIB, Crime Pays. As we left for the club we passed Symphony as they returned to their berth. We congratulated them. They asked "What for?" Our reply was "Class win". Apparently they were demoted to 2nd by the time they looked it up.
We subsequently enjoyed a good few beers in the club reliving the day's events. By the time we left everyone was looking properly tired.
Report from our favorite competitor
What follows is Roy's report, some of which struggled to get past the OMK editor!!! Symphony's track is shown on the GPS replay, but don't forget Symphony started 10 minutes after One More Knot due to handicapping differences placing the yachts in different classes. Well done to Symphony and her crew.
ISC Round the Island Race 2010
The View from Symphony
Today is to be our second Round the Island race in Symphony. Last year we were placed 4th in ISC Rating Division 6B. We are in the same division this year and obviously hoping to better that result. The latest forecast from Raymarine was as follows:
There is little change from yesterday with the first start still expecting a NNW- NNE 06-08 KT quickly building to 12-14 KT for the final starters. Throughout the morning this shifty NNW-NNE wind will steadily build peaking at 14-17 KT around 1100-1200. Offshore conditions will make the Solent and parts to the south of the island very shifty and gusty.
This meant that we would have a spinnaker first leg down to the Needles with the consequent difficulties of timing the start with the strong west going tide. Our start time of 0620 meant that we left Haslar Marina at around 0415. Once down in the outer waiting area close to the South Bramble buoy we hoisted the headsail and measured our upwind/up tide SOG and the downwind/down tide SOG. As expected they were considerably different, 2-3 knots up tide and 6-7 knots towards the start line. A quick calculation showed that if we started our run from close to the South Bramble buoy with 3 minutes to go we should have a safe but not too large a margin. This we did and the GPS plot subsequently showed that we crossed the line around 1 minute after the gun. The spinnaker was raised as we neared the line and we were on our way.
After we settled, we saw that the only white group boats ahead were those that started inshore. There, the stronger tide was giving them an advantage. However that soon disappeared and we were soon well up with the leaders.
Being in clear air was giving us a good choice of position and after a while we started catching the slower blue group boats which had started 10 minutes before us. Our speed over the ground was averaging 8-9 knots increasing to around 10 as we passed through the Hurst narrows. Soon we could see that no boats were carrying spinnakers once they had rounded the Needles and so we decided that we would drop ours soon after the gybe that was necessary once we could set our course round the outside of the wreck. It appeared that those boats that had gone inshore had lost the wind so we decided to sail further out. This paid off a lot, as the subsequent examination of our GPS track showed. We were now round the Needles and it was only 0800.
Now it was the long leg to St Catherine's point. Across Freshwater Bay our SOG was averaging 6 knots. A change of course after this had us heading closer inshore and we soon had increased our speed over the ground. Once round St Catherine's the wind became very gusty and variable in direction and we were very close to lots of other boats. This continued until we got to Dunnose. The gusts meant that Norman had to work extremely hard on the mainsheet to keep the boat under control. During this period we saw One More Knot further offshore and we were ahead!
Once past Dunnose we debated whether to put in an early tack to put us into Sandown Bay, but the tidal atlas showed there would not be any advantage, so we continued offshore. During this leg the wind continued to gust up to around 18 knots and both helm and main-sheet man had to work hard. We also came across and passed Easy Tiger 2, another boat from the PSC club class fleet. We carried on until off Culver Down and there we tacked inshore and soon found the sea state was better and gave us an increase in boat speed. Tacking back onto port we then passed the Princessa Buoy and were soon approaching the turning point at the Bembridge Ledge buoy.
We tacked onto starboard and went past the buoy leaving it about 0.1M to port. From there we carried on and put in a couple of short tacks as we approached St Helen's Fort. We then came across another PSC club class rival, this time it was Just in Time. After twice crossing tacks with them we got past and continued on our way. Later a further tack was necessary to keep us clear of the exclusion zone off Seaview. One more tack out on port was necessary to give us enough depth to pass inside No Man's Land Fort, just outside the red pile marking the 2m contour. From there we headed to the red pile marking the edge of Ryde sands. We were now on the home straight and met up with an old friend, George Simmons and his boat Katy which was also flying a white group flag. We used to race against George in the Portsmouth Spring and Autumn Series when he had an Hunter Impala, Celerity and we had the MG C27, Rhapsody. Half a mile or so further on, both boats gradually worked their way through the fleet to obtain a more inshore position. It was then a race to the finish. During this time we had several boats from the Sunsail fleet with us. We steered a fairly direct course towards the finish not going inshore too far. Comparing GPS plots with One More Knot after the race showed that this cost us a couple of minutes. We crossed the finish line at 1430 giving us an elapsed time of 8 hours and 10 minutes, around 2 minutes ahead of Katy and 11 minutes behind One More Knot who had started 10 minutes before us.
Heading back to Haslar in the still very gusty conditions we sent in the declaration by text. Upon arrival we were greeted by Phil and the OMK crew who cheered and clapped us and said we were first in division 6B. However upon checking on the laptop when moored up we found that we were now second, the boat that took first, obviously declared after the provisional result that showed us in first place.
We all agreed that it was a super race and were very pleased with our result in the Island Sailing Club Rating System; 92nd overall, 16th in the white group and 2nd in division 6B.
Many thanks to all the crew of Symphony who helped make this a super day.