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

Olympic sailor Paul Brotherton sailed on the Swan 56 Magical ...
I was fortunate to be invited to sail in the Hoya Round the Island race on the immaculate Swan 56 Magical with owner Edward Leask, his wife Marilyn and his three children all of whom are excellent sailors; Magnus, Inga and Cailah, I was doubly keen to do the race, because not only have I never competed in a Round the Island race, but I also have a very limited amount of keel boat racing experience.

Charged with the job of tactician, I anxiously read all the superb Mike Broughton notes, and very early on decided that we would give the Needles a wide berth! It goes without saying that the first thing that struck me about competing in this race is just the sheer quantity and diversity of boats.

Having hoped that we could make a starboard tack approach to the start line and flick onto port at or just before start time, we quickly changed our plan, as it seemed the majority of the fleet would be approaching on port. Even with all the rights in the world asking 20 or 30, 30-50ft keel boats to tack just as they start is a little more than ambitious!

We managed to make a reasonable start in the middle of the line, and were very pleased with ourselves as we opened up a clear lane and launched ourselves towards Yarmouth in the increasing tide. We spent the initial five minutes admiring the unbelievable speed at which the giant Skandia Leopard - the eventual monohull record breaker - left the start line.

Approaching Yarmouth we pulled off a nifty stroke and kept a little further offshore than the majority of the boats in our pack, including Eva, Nokia and a couple of Farr 40s. Sadly however these small gains we lost with our conservative rounding of the Needles.

The two sail reach punching the tide towards St Catherine's Point had one of our non-sailing guests - a notable ex track and field athlete - revisiting his breakfast. No names mentioned of course.

As we eased away around St Catherine's Point, we were able to hoist Edward's latest addition to his sailing inventory - a very nice asymmetric spinnaker. With the wind increasing to 20-25 knots we made rapid progress and had some great surfs towards Bembridge Ledge buoy.

All was going well as we approached No Mans Land Fort and had to drop the spinnaker in order that we could round up on a close reach to the finish. It's fair to say that our spinnaker drop was less that perfect. It's amazing how quickly you can slow down a 56ft Swan we you put more than 100sq meters of spinnaker in the tide. With some quick decision making, Terry the skipper flashed the blade and cut through the spinnaker halyard and all hands retrieved the fishing net. Remarkably, we only lost 8 or 9 boat lengths in this operation.

We had a good battle with one of the smaller catamarans on the fetch to the finish. In each gust over 15 knots he would rocket forward at about 15 knots, and then park in the lull that followed. Meanwhile with our extra momentum we maintained our speed of 8-10 knots, and barely noticed the lulls.

As we crossed the finish line, I did have to spare a thought, for the poor trimmers on some of those stripped out Grand Prix racing boats who would have been denied the unbelievable pleasure of pressing a button when you needed a few inches on the sheets.