Sailing with Shirley

John Greenland joined the girls on board the 1720 Skandia

Shirley Robertson has spent most of her time sailing keelboats since winning her Olympic Gold medal in the Europe class in Sydney last year. This week is no exception as she is helming the 1720 Skandia Life and I was lucky enough to be headsail trimmer on board today.
The first thing that you notice when sailing with someone as well accomplished as Shirley is that the boat is meticulously prepared, and the crew are continuously aware of their jobs both on, and off, of the water.

Very little communication was needed when a task needed to be done, just a couple of words and the crew would immediately understand. Shirley, used to sailing alone, stays fairly quite throughout the race - focusing hard on driving the boat hard, which has been a particularly tough job over the past couple of days in blustery, 30 knot winds.

While there were few hairy moments around the race course, the incidents that could have caused excitement were calmly resolved with very little shouting involved. A broach early on in the race as a result of a trapped spinnaker halyard was the only major incident in the entire race. Some crews would have been held up for several minutes; the Skandia team was resuming their course in 30 seconds - with the spinnaker now up.

The crew pushed hard, pumping on every wave, always feeding Shirley with information about other boats, the wind, and where to head for the next mark. Discussions were always shared with the whole crew, especially when it came to deciding on the spinnaker size to fly for the six mile, broad reach, towards Portsmouth.

So strong was the gel between the crew that even when faced with a 300m gap to the first 1720, the team remained calm and got on with their jobs. The separation was slowly eaten away on the upwind leg, with the Skandia crew passing into first place moments before rounding on to the second downwind leg.

There was no point during the entire 2.5-hour race where it felt as though Shirley was not in control of the boat. On approaching the finishing line second-placed 1720, YachtsandYachting.com, closed in to catch the Skandia team on starboard. Again Shirley remained calm, simply calling for the jib to be eased and the main to be pulled on, squeezing the opposition in no time at all.

Team Skandia went on to finish first in class for the second time this week.