Meet the Crew

Our crew was Alison and I and we were joined by Dominic Gooding from Belladonna (Dazcat 10) as the third sailor, and we then had two remarkable chaps who like running up and down things…. Mark Davies and Chris Near. Mark was a last-minute replacement as one of our original runners managed to break the week before.

The Race

We played overtake with “That’s not my Dog” – skippered by Elliott Wilkinson, who has done a lot of racing with Rupert Kidd on Dazcat 1195 Sueños. We were in first place going into Whitehaven as the wind dropped and again we fell prey to light wind beating and monohulls. So, second in it was. There was some justice as the Harbour is tidal and so we were able to pull our boards up and sneak in early. Chris and Mark went off to do their thing which involved cycling 20 miles running up and down Scafell and then … cycling back again. They were quick and we were shallow so we gained a tide advantage on the rest who at 2.5 m draft were a little deeper than us. As we left the wind picked up and we were soon heading off to Scotland  hitting 15 knots with the A3 up.

Sadly, rather than turning the corner and going N, waving adios to the rest of the fleet, we sailed into an enormous wind hole off St Bees head — about 3 times bigger than those nice people at Predict Wind had forecasted and drifted and kedged watching the rest of the fleet come back at us.

As the wind picked up we went into the first of 4 big tidal gates between us and the finish. We did feel sorry for Chris and Mark who were below in the rear cabin as we bashed to windward in 20 knts wind through some really horrible overfalls. Afterwards their comments were that they liked it when we shouted as they were a bit worried when it went all quiet that we were no longer on board. They were remarkable — only one minor bout of mal de mer when they were putting their bikes together before Whitehaven, and they cooked for us – washed up and got involved in sail hoisting when we finally turned after Mull of Kintyre and went into a screacher then kite then jib cycle and repeat as the wind dropped and rose and changed direction as it seems to be able to do quite easily in Scotland.    

We had a tidal gate to meet on early Wed morning at the Crinnan Narrows or be caught and it was with a bit a nail biting we felt the wind drop and saw two monos coming back with A2’s going DDW. 17 jibes later – NB for the rest of the year BN will only be turning around by tacking – we finished the sailing leg. Our runners then went skedallying off up and down Ben Nevis and that was that……