It's racing but not as we know it

Tony Harris relished being on board the winning Thames Barge for their first race at Skandia Life Cowes Week in many years

We crossed the start line seven minutes after the gun went and we were leading the fleet - welcome to Thames Barge Racing!
This year, for only the second time in its history Cowes Week hosted a Thames Sailing Barge race and a number of the east coast barges had turned up. These majestic vessels that once plied the east coast of Britain carrying cargo sailed by a man, a boy and a dog are, believe it or not, raced very competitively.

After a chance meeting with an old friend of mine Mark Tower in the PVYC I found myself helping out as one of the afterguard on Sailing Barge Ironsides (operated by Topsail Charters) for the first day of Cowes Week. I was assisting James Stewart on tactics and Peter Grogan on nav.

85 feet long and weighing in at 90 tons with 3000 square feet of sail area, these boats are not to be messed with. In a crowded Solent in a Force 3-4 SW breeze you need to keep your wits about you.

The first thing that you have to get used to on a Thames barge is the vocabulary. 'Fleeting the chain', 'peaks and uppers', 'wang', 'horse', and my favourite, 'grundling the leeboards' - I'm still none the wiser but the boat was full of experienced barge racers who all seemed to understand the instructions barked by skipper and owner Mark Tower as we beat up the mainland shore towards our first mark, Berthon.

Plugging the tide, we were short tacking (sort of) this beast up towards Lymington leading the fleet of seven by a tidy margin. Don't volunteer for leeboard trimming on a Thames Barge, not unless you're used to grinding on a big boat. The leeboard winches are about three foot in diameter and are cranked with a iron handle about four foot long, and it's hard work.

But the boat was flying, we got over eight knots over the ground out of her as we powered upwind keeping an eye on our competition who were still all behind us. As the class one and two boats came through us past Beaulieu it all got a bit hectic, but we stayed out of trouble and kept our pace up. It was during this leg that Thistle had to retire after a port and starboard incident with a smaller boat ( Thistle were on starboard), luckily nobody was hurt.

By the time we had reached the windward mark we had a two-tack twenty-boat length lead over Cabby, a bowsprit class barge, and our main competition. We rounded Berthon to starboard just as Class 0 rounded it to port - well it is Cowes Week - so we gave the mark a wide berth to give Cap Gemini (the ex- Rothmans) a clear path round the same buoy.

Main out, staysail up and goose winged and we were off downwind and preparing for a gybe to cover our opposition and avoid hitting England. The backstay was snagged and with about 18 knots of breeze and ever decreasing depth beneath us we couldn't gybe and were forced to round up and tack. We'd lost half our lead, but once Ironsides was back on the other gybe we had the perfect angle for the next mark, Raytheon,and we were soon opening up on her again.

Once round Raytheon, we hardened up a touch and went straight to our finish. Lengthy discussion at the back of the boat ensued as to which side of beta we were supposed to finish so we went outside, which seemed to us the most sensible and safest. We were about five minutes ahead of the next boat Cabby and Mark Tower was delighted to have beaten his auld enemy Gerald, the skipper of Cabby, by a handsome margin.

Fantastic weather, amazing boats. If you fancy trying a different sort of racing have a go on of these beautiful old boats and marvel at how they were ever sailed by a man a boy and the proverbial dog.

How many boats have you raced on that have a full-on bar with optics and a piano?