June 3rd 2018
The Royal Western Yacht Club’s Round Britain & Ireland 2 Handed.  The event we had all been preparing for finally arrived. Participating Dazcats and their co-skippers were:

Hissy Fit (D1495), Simon & Matt Baker
Sueños (D1195) Rupert Kidd & Elliot Wilkinson
Bare Necessities (D1150) Bruce Sutherland & Alison Busfield
Belladonna (D10) Dominic Gooding & Matt Theobald

Also in MOCRA and racing from the Multihull Centre was:
The Edge (40′ Nigel Irens tri) Chris Briggs and Andrew Carr.

Footage from on board each of the Dazcats gives you a unique glimpse into life on board. As the boats make their way two-handed around Britain and Ireland they encounter almost every possible scenario and share their highs and lows with you. At times it’s pretty raw.

The 2018 RBI was to be a race that had us totally gripped from beginning to end, with unexpected events on an almost daily basis, unprecedented changes to race history, calms, storms and some nail-biting match racing. Dazcat Media (me) learnt the true meaning of Corinthian racing. I’d had to look it up before the race start but the wide variety of dry sounding definitions, explanations and histories to be found online didn’t seem to answer my question and it wasn’t until the race was underway that I began to really understand – surprise, shock, amusement, sadness, worry, and absolute enthralment were the emotions that I went through as I gained understanding! Pretty much anything goes so long as you cover the given course without use of power…but even that changed on this race. Each of our Dazcats was armed with a camera and sets of media cards to send back to Dazcat Central from each stop. The result was some truly excellent footage of each of the boats, up close and honest glimpses of life onboard while racing 2000 miles in extreme conditions. There are many videos for you to choose from on You Tube – individual legs for each boat as well as overviews for each leg.

Below is a full overview of the race. It’s almost a feature length film but well worth the watch by all accounts.

Below that is Matt Baker’s superb written account of Hissy Fit’s race and if by any chance you are a Facebooker and somehow missed it, you can scroll back through our page and discover the drama as it unfolded through our daily updates…

The Royal Western Two Handed round Britain and Ireland race is one of my favourite ways to spoil an otherwise perfectly good June. It’s a rare combination of fear, boredom and camaraderie, coupled with bouts of light drinking and beautiful scenery. I can’t recommend it highly enough.
The race this year started on the 3rd of June in Plymouth. The fleet consisted of 18 boats, 5 of which were Multihulls.

The MOCRA crews

The Edge managed to get in first in a mere 22 hours, with Hissy second, Suenos, Bare Necessities and then Belladonna.

It was a very easy start to the race but even so The Edge needed some serious Plexus surgery to the back beam, involving a 150mile  round-trip to Shannon in a 1970’s Austin Maxi.
After 2 days of getting our fill of Murphy’s (not Guiness in the south of Ireland I’m told) and great live music we were on our way to Barra.

Leg two started with as little breeze as we finished with and meant hours more rowing. Eventually we crept down to the Fastnet and the wild West Coast. This is where things start to get seriously beautiful as the scenery becomes truly magnificent. Past the Abbey on Great Skellig is a wonderous sight on an oily sea with a long Atlantic swell and makes me want to return  and go cruising.
Here the wind started to shift into the north and fill. Poor old Suenos got completely dumped in a private hole despite being almost next to Belladonna and ended playing catch up.

 

The Edge piled off into the distance and we soon lost him on the AIS thinking that  would be the last we would see of him. A lonely next 48 hrs as we trudged out to the NW initially looking for a shift to take us back to the rum-line. The shift came and despite the softening forecast we kept moving well.

As we closed on Barra suddenly The Edge popped up on the AIS about 15miles in front and by the time we’d got done a few gybes down to Barra Heads we’d closed him down to about 2 miles. He had the last laugh though as the early morning breeze shut down just after he’d crossed the line and we then had to row for 2 hrs to make the final couple of miles.
Bare Necessities had a great run and were next in, only a couple of hours behind us. Then the big surprise of Belladonna still in front of Suenos and going into the lead on handicap.

 We sailed down the back of Lewis and the forecast breeze started to build. We were miles behind our routing and made the decision to stop in Loch Roag as the wind hit about 30kts. We thought we’d have to anchor and so didn’t want to leave it too late and risk not finding a good sheltered spot.

This is were the race started to get a bit weird. After we got in we found out that The Edge had gone back to Barra to seek shelter. Suenos started but once round Barra Head put back in and sought shelter on the next island up. Belladonna stayed in Barra and Bare Necessities retired and headed for the mainland.

Hissy Fit’s Leg 3 ‘Logumentary’ video. As she heads north it all starts to go a bit differently to the expected…

I haven’t mentioned the monohulls up till now as they hadn’t proved to be much of a problem. Now however, the leading class 40 Cariberia had left Barra on the way to St Kilda and without AIS or a tracker had gone off the radar. The remaining monos had all stayed in in port but were now petitioning the race director to shorten the course by not going round St.Kilda, instead going into Lerwick via the south (e.g. not over the top of Mukkle Flugga) and shortening the stopover in Lowestoft to 24 hours.

The unscheduled stop in Lewis then got seriously windy and we were stuck there for 36 hours whilst it blew dogs off chains. St Kilda reporting 60 odd kts. Luckily we found a pontoon in a really sheltered spot and had plenty of hospitality from a local wildlife watching outfit. We left Lewis as early as we dared with the wind still blowing about 30 kts and a  6m swell . Two reefs in and the screecher up and we ripped down past the off lying islands of Sula Segir at consistent speeds in the teens.

The course had been officially shortened now, as mentioned, and we gybed away between Orkney and Shetland to head into Lerwick from the south. At Sumburgh Head we got stuck in a rather dramatic set of overfalls that saw us going backwards for nearly 5 hours and took the shine off an otherwise good leg.

As we got closer to Lerwick we had no idea where the class 40 was. Had they sought shelter or had they toughed it out? As we rounded the harbour there she was, looking more than a little battered with torn sails on deck and soaked autopilot motors stripped and drying. It turns out they had just got to Mukkle Flugga when the storm came on from the west and despite being in the lee of the Shetlands they couldn’t make Lerwick and had to run off under bare poles. After a conversation with the Coastguard they had gone to bed. Then the coastguard not hearing anything more from them had launched a lifeboat and a helicopter to search for them.

So we now had a strange situation were the lead boat had been round St.Kilda and Mukkle Flugga, We had been round St. Kilda but not Mukkle Flugga and everyone else hadn’t been round either. I’m glad it wasn’t up to me to sort out the results…

The organisers eventually divided them into ‘Race 1’ (Cariberia only) and Race 2 (everyone else). Hissy Fit  managed to take the Muckle Flugga Trophy for Race 2 although she didn’t round it…it was for first on elapsed time to Lerwick.

The Edge came in 6 hours later minus a bowsprit. They still had all the bits mind and spent much of the stopover sticking it back together with the help of a local who had been part of the original build team. Suenos had a blinder of a leg and had pulled out 11 hours on Belladonna, who got stuck in the same overfalls as us at Sumburgh.

The next low was on its way and we hoped we wouldn’t get  trapped again. Cariberia left 14 hours in front of us and by the time we left it was blowing 40 kts in the harbour entrance. A few hours with 3 reefs and a heavy jib and we appeared to be out-running the gale. The beam reach down most of the leg was bloody freezing with the wind again up to 40 kts and Biff and I had to alternate one on, one off for quite a bit of it to stay warm.

The Edge had a bit of a moment at their start when, with 3 reefs and a staysail up, the genoa unfurled and then refused to go back to bed. It flogged itself to death and nearly had the boat up the rocks. The boys were left with no option but to go back in and cut it all free.

By the time we got to Lowestoft Hissy Fit had taken a big chunk out of Cariberia and was only 4 hours adrift. The other Multis had all fallen a long way back and it was starting to look like a two-horse dash for the finish.  We had a good run across the entrance to the Thames Estuary and our new J zero that had arrived in Lerwick finally got an airing. It was a big improvement in the sub 10 kt department and meant that Hissy’s Achilles heel was somewhat healed. As we neared Eastbourne our nemesis was in sight. A few swapped tacks and a trip right under beachy head, (if someone had jumped, they’d have landed on the foredeck) and we were up with them. Then off the Isle of Wight as night fell we wriggled into the lead. As day broke the breeze disappeared completely and it was time to kedge off the back of the island. Cariberia lost 4 miles as they drifted back past St. Cats in the deeper water. The wind continued to be fitful all the way down the coast and it was a big struggle to keep moving. By the time we got to Salcome we had 15 miles to go and a 5-mile lead. The gods weren’t done with us yet though and turned the wind off again. More rowing and more kedging saw Cariberia sail up to us and stop so close we talked about what we’d all had for breakfast. This was getting painful! several more park ups before Plymouth and Cariberia being marginally faster in the sub 3 kts of breeze, she pulled out and beat us across the Western club line by about a mile, or 43 minutes.

Happy we had done all we could, we had to be content to take the Multihull win overall and on handicap. The Edge was next in, followed by Suenos and Belladonna who came second on handicap. An amazing result for Dominic and Matt, the smallest boat in the whole fleet and one that’s 20 years old at that.

A massive thanks to the Royal Western, David and Vianney Searle the race directors who did a great job in difficult circumstances. Also a big thanks to Biffa for inviting me to race with him. It was a bit different from the last time I did the race in 2006 on the 10m tri Paradox, which was a brutal experience, Hissy Fit is just a massive floating palace by comparison.

RBI 2022 anyone??

Plymouth – the Finish