A day to remember

The Daily Sail spoke to Round the Island CRO Dave Atkinson and found out how the Rogers family won for the second time

Saturday night in Cowes, Hamble and other yachting strongholds around the Solent there were a lot of happy, slightly sunburned yawning people hanging on to their pints.

"Everyone is saying it was a classic race: brilliant conditions, a good day’s sailing, one of the best for many years," commented Chief Race Office, Dave Atkinson recovering from a 24 hour stint in the race control hut at the top of the Island Sailing Club.

Far from being the drifting match that was being widely forecast, the wind came up and at one point was blowing up to 20 knots around St Catherine's Point.

"Friday afternoon if anyone had asked me what was going to be the form for Saturday I would have said I reckon we’ll have to shorten the course at Bembridge," commented Chief Race Office, Dave Atkinson. "We talked to the weather people who were saying you may have 5 knots of breeze at the start and that’s all you’re going to get. Then to wake up at 0400 Saturday morning and find you have a really decent breeze out there… We had 15 knots for a majority of the day at Bembridge and then it went down to 5-6 knots for a while and then came back up again."

Flat water, reasonable breeze and good conditions made from an incident free Round the Island. Of the 1,600 or so starters roughly 100 retired, the lowest attrition for many years.

Around 8-10 boats glanced off the Needles Wreck, despite a coastguard RIB hovering over it shepherding people away. With the westbound tide there were several individual recalls in each start, but no general recalls as there was in 2002.

For the second consecutive year the race was won by the Rogers family Contessa 26, Rosina of Beaulieu, with on this occasion the Rogers sons and not designer/boatbuilder Jeremy Rogers.

"It was basically a classic small boat race. Every time we turned a corner, the tide turned," commented a jubilant Simon Rogers. "It was one year that it was definitely going to be won by a little boat - the big boats didn’t have a chance."

The first thing to watch out for was the start line - downwind and with the tide running at 2.5-3 knots. "There was a light running start. Our main concern was that we weren’t over the line at the start, so we made damn sure we were the correct side of it," continued Rogers who said they had then hooked into the main competition Edward Donald's Folkboat Madelaine. "We’ve sailed against them a couple of times now and we knew they were the keys people to beat. Basically we were with him 200m the whole way round."

The race was still looking a little margin before Rosina had got out the Solent. "We were very pleased we got down there because we were worried we were going to run of breeze before the tide turned in which case it was going to be a quick lunch in the George and home..."

They had almost ran out of wind in Alum Bay. "I thought - 'that's it - we’re in trouble'. It wouldn’t have taken much for the tide to have turned and we would all have been kedged and it would have been a right mess. As it was we were very lucky and the tide seemed to last a bit long going up to the Needles than we expected. It ran about another 30 minutes longer than we thought it might have done."

Rogers said that the forecast he had got at 0500 that morning had indicated that there was going to be 3 knots of NE wind going SE in the Solent up to 0900 and 17 knots on the south side of the island. "So I realised there was wind down the back of the island, but I was a bit concerned whether we were going to make it there."

If the forecast underestimated the breeze in the Solent, it was more accurate once out into the open water.

"We got round the corner and there was a good 12 knots of breeze, 15 maximum," says Rogers. "We went inshore where the tide turned first. Halfway up the Bay where there are some ledges we came offshore on port tack and got a massive port shift all the way out and played a couple of shifts off St Catherines. We never got onshore again - we were always at least a mile offshore. There are the overfalls - we were not trying to get outside of them, but we were trying to find some flat water. With a little 26 footer you pitch very badly and when you get into a hobbyhorse situation you chop water and don’t go forward. Flat water was important in that breeze."

Again at Dunnose Point they stayed off as it looked lighter inshore in Sandown Bay, although past experience also said it was wise to stay out of Sandown Bay.

"4-5 years ago there were two races when the class 1 boats were becalmed at Dunnose Point and the boats that went offshore sail right round the whole lot. I was on one of the boats at Dunrose Point – so I won’t forget that in a hurry. The following year we did the exact same thing with Gandolf (Don Wood's Swan 55). We went offshore and sailed right round the whole fleet. Offshore can pay particularly with an easterly. You’ve got some very big cliffs and hills and the wind has a nasty way of going up them."

From Dunnose to Bembridge they were careful to stick to the rhumb line. "A lot of people seemed to be overstanding, with the tide sweeping them past. So there was an opportunity to make a small gain," says Rogers. "We rhumb lined it on the GPS."

Rounding Bembridge Ledge they were also very lucky with the tide. "The tide was already slack and within 2-3 minutes of getting round the corner we were into fair tide, with about ¾ knot underneath us," said Rogers.

But the race was far from over. At this stage they were still within contact of their Folkboat rival Madelaine but almost lost on the home straight.

"I always say it every year - the race will be won or lost on the leg back from the Forts," says Rogers. "We thought we couldn’t see any reason not to go down the rhumb line. Madelaine went hard into the beach where the tide had turned just that bit more and they had more breeze in there." Madelaine sneaked up past Ryde Sands while Rosina sailed slightly south of the rhumb line.

"We felt they had to go and do something desperate and go for a flier to try and beat us because we were too close to them, but we felt it would have been a radical thing for us to have done as well. But they took five minutes out of us, having level pegged it all the way round!"

Madelaine finished two minutes ahead of Rosina but fortunately they needed to have finished 9-10 minutes ahead to beat them on handicap. "So we were fairly shaken I have to say," says Rogers.

He says it was a struggle to have won it last year when it was a 'big boat year'. In fact the class 1 boats last year underwent a general recall and ended up starting 1.5 hours later. In the end Kit Hobday and Tim Louis' Farr 52 Bear of Britain finished 17 seconds behind on corrected time. This year it was more of a little boat race with the weather being the main variable. "When we started out I thought we were going to have a good chance with a small boat, but we were a bit concerned that there was going to be a major curved ball thrown our way with the weather," says Rogers.

Rosina and the Rogers family are only the second people to have won the Gold Roman Bowl on two consecutive years running - the first was Prime Minister Edward Heath. Simon Rogers says they will return again next year to see if they can be the first to get the hat trick. "We’re were absolutely thrilled. I have asked the Island Sailing Club what happens if we win it three times. Do we keep the Trophy?" Apparently the answer is the opposite of affirmative...

Rogers says that they did little work to Rosina to optimise her this year (although a lot of work was done prior to last year's race - see our interview with Simon Rogers last year). "She’s been pretty much optimised now. There are little things I could do. But our rating went up 6 points from last year and I haven’t been able to establish why. Mike [Irwin of RORC's Rating Office] said that is a fact of life. They’ve been tightening up on the little boats, but I don’t know any other little boat’s rating that has gone up. So there may be a bit of Portsmouth Yardstick in there!

"But it was fine. We won by 3 minutes and it was very tight in our class. A lot tighter than it was last year. At the end of the day, if you win your class and you are in class 1 or class 12 you are in with a good chance of winning. It is either going to be a big boat or a little boat race."

It has been a good week for Simon Rogers for it was a week ago that he returned from having set a new motorboating record around the British Isles. In this they took 25% off the previous time and also beat the record time for the 30-50ft class.