Follow Shirley - she must be right...

Lynsey Thomas steps on board John Roberson's Fremantle 8 - F'eightal Attraction

The brief when I stepped on the boat this morning was to have fun, not to worry that the six of us had never sailed before - the jobs would be sorted out whenever, and to keep an eye on Shirley Robertson, Olympic gold medalist sailing a 1720 in our fleet - stick close to her and you couldn't go far wrong - what she doesn't know about the tides around the Solent isn't worth knowing.

The owner of the boat John Roberson was a very relaxed and confident sailor. I'm used to sailing with people who seem to thrive on pre-start tension with everything meticulously planned to the ninth degree. Sailing today was absolute bliss. We didn't so much as race as saunter across the start line erring toward the committee boat end leaving a bunch of 1720s arguing it out amongst themselves as they luffed and shouted each other further toward the committee boat.

As we headed towards West Ryde middle buoy the fleet split with the majority of the 1720s opting for the right hand side of the course. Ourselves and the German boat True Love took the left hand side but as we rounded the mark True Lovehit the mark and snapped their stanchions. A 360 penalty turn left them at the back of the fleet as the rest of us hoisted our spinnakers towards Lee-on-the-Solent.

Humming along nicely we seemed to be comfortably holding our ground with the 1720s. As we neared the edge of the tide and the shore the waves got higher and threw buckets of water over the crew and left me feeling pleased not to be sitting in the brunt of it. Our last downwind leg allowed us to make even more time on the 1720s, and although our final drop was less than perfect it didn't seem to do us any harm finishing second place to the infamous Shirley Robertson.

Back on shore we found out our tactics had worked perfectly, with one exception. Shirley was not racing her 1720 today!