Tales from the Round the Island Race - 2

Olympic sailor Paul Brotherton sails his first Round the Island on a Swan; Tony Harris was on Stephen Bailey's Sydney 40 Arbitrator

Tony Harris:
On the boat by 7.00 am was the instruction, and we all just about managed it - not too bad by Round the Island standards where very early starts are normally required. Our 8.10 am start time was almost civilised.

Arbitrator is Stephen Bailey's Sydney 40 and was last used in anger in the Admiral's Cup. Following the cancellation of this year's Admiral's Cup Stephen made the decision to have some modifications made to her. Enter, Jason Ker, designer of the moment, who was asked to redesign the keel, remove all the internal ballast (approx 500 kilos) to optimise Arbitrator's rating under IRM. The work was completed with a day to spare, and this was her first outing in her new guise. How would she perform?

The team onboard for the day was a scratch team put together by Nick Griffith but included a number of old hands with whom I'd sailed before including Fraser Graham in the pit, Simon Barnes on mast, Dave 'Spike' King on mainsheet. Mike Martell was guest helm for the day and Nick Griffith and Stephen Bailey completed the after guard.

Mike did a great job of started as we found ourselves about 400 yards up from the Squadron hitting the line at full speed as the gun went off, and more importantly we had clear air.

With the tide under us and the No2 headsail on (changed, as they always seem to be, with only four minutes to go before the start) we made good speed towards Sconce buoy. We were in a bunch of boats that included Farr 40s and Beneteau 47.7s and Spike was working the main hard as he trimmed for the bullets that rolled off the shore.

By 9.00 am Hurst Castle was approaching and we were going through the Etchells fleet and what looked like being a beat ahead of us to the Needles.

Three tacks later, dodging some large cruising multihulls, we arrived at the Needles. The big question was inside the wreck or not? There was only one answer for a team that had been following Mike Broughton's articles on madforsailing; we were all experts now, we all knew where the wreck was. Suddenly the remaining electronics on the boat decided to pack up, but we were going inside anyway. We followed Tony Buckingham's Farr 40 A Bit of a Coup through the gap and into the big swell on the other side. Outside of us were the Beneteau 47.7s and Nokia- they all went outside the wreck, so we made up heaps!! Big grins all round. Thanks, Mike Broughton.

So by 9.45am we had changed up to the Medium heavy No1 and were reaching in the big swell and a decent SSW breeze, although by now we had no instruments. I'd guess we were in a force 4 and it was nice and quick.

continued on page 2...

To read Round the Island virgin Paul Brotherton's account see page 4...