GBR44 round the island

'It was like taking a F1 car round a rally car circuit,' describes Neal McDonald

Our late start time of 1000 meant we even had a lie in compared to our week day routine. Our four hours 23 mins of sailing was positively pedestrian compared to the boats normal six hour battles in the Solent. Whereas for most of the 1700 or so yachts in the race this was a day of high adventure and excitement, it ended up being a bit of a day off for our guys, although it would have been a different story had the weather got worse or anything had broken.

Our start included three other AC boats and two Open 60s on the line, so there was some excitement prestart even though the line was huge. We managed to get a safe but fast start crossing the line at full pace (10 knots) some three or four seconds after the gun. Hoya was two boats lengths to windward with a similar start, the rest of our fleet were already some way behind. We were all interested to see how the 1995 generation Hoya boat was going to go compared to our 2000 generation machine. Everything suggested we should be faster.

Unfortunately, before we really had a chance to find out Hoya's jib blew up, letting us sail a few hundred yards ahead. From then on it was no longer a race - all we had to do was to sail fast, stay out of trouble, not hit any other boats or the ground and try not to break anything. The weather played into our hands and we fetched down to Hurst in one long port tack with the tide under us averaging about 13 knots across the ground.

Unfortunately we had by then caught up with a very large group of smaller boats and had to delicately weave through the pack as we tacked up to the Needles. We had to make a few rapid alterations to our course to avoid collisions with starboard tack boats, but on the whole managed to keep out of trouble. It must have been a strange sight seeing a 25 tonne AC boat going to windward at 10 knts ducking a 18 foot cruising boat going 4.5 knots, and we certainly got some peculiar looks as we ploughed though this part of the fleet.

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