The ins and outs of it

TheDailySail wraps up this years Round the Island Race

This years Round the Island race will not go down as a classic, a light to moderate south easterly is not the best wind direction for a record setting pace and after a bright colourful dawn the day was characterised by flat, dull light bringing with it drizzle, then heavy rain.

The first leg down to the Needles favoured boats that were good at shy reaching especially those with asymmetric spinnakers, before almost all boats then had to beat upto St Catherines. Another reach, turning into a run at Bembridge and back up to the finish line provided a mix of sail combinations.

A beat to St Catherines opened the way for the little boats in the overall stakes; they did this leg with favourable tide. For the bigger boats this meant some rock hopping along the southern shore of the Isle of Wight, and for Orange II the end of any chance of a record.

Bruno Peyron’s new maxi cat, at 120ft seemed to glide along effortlessly, while boats around her looked stationary. Peyron’s first attempt of the day was in the first official start of the day at 6am. After being a little cautious on start line the big cat didn’t take the lead on the water until Gunard – a stretch of about ¾ of a mile as the smaller tris took the initiative setting shy reaching asymmetrics. Hot on Peyron’s heels was Francis Joyon in his 75ft trimaran Idec, the current race record holder was keen to keep in touch with his biggest threat.

A beat up to St Catherines was not what the big cat wanted. “We need a little more right in the wind” Peyron said later. Even Orange II can’t sail from the Forts to Cowes in nine minutes and so the record was safe for another year. Idec followed in close behind and took the class on a corrected time of 6hrs 41mins and 18 seconds.



Meanwhile, back on the Squadron Line, wave after wave of yachts took to their starts. IRC Group 1 looked to be pretty competitive, with plenty of boats in the scrap for a good start and clean air. The four Farr 52’s soon broke into the lead, with Chris Little’s Bounder an IC45 in good shape too. One boat was called over the line by the race officials and had to extricate herself from her position and fight the tide back to re-start.

First major casualty of the race was Mike Slade’s Leopard of London, with what looked like a couple of bus loads of sailors on the weather rail. She suffered a broken runner off Yarmouth and had to withdraw. This opened up the line honours battle in the monohull division, would this be Full Pelt’s dream debut?

Unfortunately it was not to be, as skipper Jo Richards explained at the end of the race. They had been suffering from some hydraulic niggles for the canting keel during the previous two weeks and they had been playing catch up. “It’s taking us a long time to pump [the keel]” Said Richards, “basically it’s a pump issue rather than a fundamental issue.” Although first monohull through the Needles, Richards said the ensuing beat, where they were down speed for 400 or 500 yards after each tack nailed them.

Because of the hydraulic issues the team were then behind on their rig set up and tuning, which Richards identified as “not enough sideways support in the middle of the mast.” He was however very pleased to “get round in one piece.” Needless to say they did not look to flash on handicap – but then that’s refreshingly irrelevant for a boat like this.

The Varvassi claimed it’s annual victim. This time it was Jackdaw. Who according to the Solent Coastguard notes ‘Hit a submerged object’. It’s not looking good for Jackdaw who hit hard and caused plenty of damaged to her keel.

Solent Coastguard was also called upon to help a yacht in ISC Group G called Stag Night, who had an ‘incident with a lobster pot’. Perhaps they couldn’t tie the Stag to the end of it and needed some additional expertise.

The most serious incident was a woman needing to be taken off Stargift, a Westerly Fulmar in ISC Group F. She was airlifted to Queen Alexandra Hospital in Portsmouth with suspected head injuries.

The Farr 52s had a good battle all the way round. Peter Harrison was onboard GB Paralympics Chernikeef, with several of the British Paralympic sailors including Andy Cassell, joining them were several Members of Parliament and GBR Challenge helmsman Andy Beadworth. According to Pete Selby, on Team Tonic, GB P C displayed good upwind speed on the back of the Island with a well stacked rail. Tonic was sailing nip and tuck with GB P C and Bear of Britain, but lost the initiative when they hit Brook Ledges (surprising as Pete wrote about the dangers in his navigational guide to the race on TheDailySail last week…). Helmsman Jeremy Robinson smashed the starboard wheel during the impact and had to sail the remainder of the race just using the port wheel.

Winner of the navigational battle was Peter Morton on Bear of Britain. Stuart Childerly, one of the helmsmen on Bear explained: “At St Cats, with about a mile to go, Chernikeef was leading and then we cut the corner a little bit and skimmed across the rocks and just popped out in front again. Morty [Peter Morton] called it just right. It’s nice to put the navigator under a little bit of pressure!”

This was enough to pop Bear out into the lead, which she held for the remainder of the race. But it was close with Bear winning from Tonic by just 14 seconds on corrected time.

Bringing up rear of the 52s was Red Bear, the former Hollywood Boulevard now part of the Kit Hobday stable and skippered by Nigel Musto. He was happy with their performance against their much more practised rivals. “The boat came in from Malysia last Saturday,” explained Musto back at Cowes Yacht Haven. “The rig went up on Thursday for the first time and it was our first time out in a 52, so we were always going to be at the back of the bunch. We were slow with things and careful with things but there were no great dramas on board, no breakages, we didn’t hit anything…”

As the 52s were coming up the Eastern Solent, so Peyron lit up Orange II for the second time, crossing the line at the Squadron in an attempt on the distance record around the Island in the now increased wind. This second circumnavigation took him two hours and 53 minutes, just twenty minutes off the record set by Steve Fossett in 2001. In the process Orange II lapped all but 15 or so boats in the 1,600 strong fleet.

One boat he didn’t beat was Alex Thomson’s Open 60 NeedaSponsor.co.uk. Showing good speed on the reach out of the Solent, Thomson took the line honours in the monohulls. Let’s hope he now wins his sponsorship race to get to the start line of the Vendee Globe this Autumn.



Another prominent tussle was going on in the Laser SB3 fleet. Shirley Robertson, Iain Percy, Steve Mitchell and Ben Ainslie all skippered one each, as part of Team Volvo for Life. Current class hot shot – Volvo Ocean Race CEO Glenn Bourke had the bit between his teeth to try and beat the young pretenders.

Ainslie took up the running after an excellent start put him just ahead of Bourke, the two were never more than hundred metres apart all the way round.

However things didn’t work out for Bourke as a damp and salty Ainslie expained on his return. “We were right next to each other all the way. Reaching down to Bembridge Ledge, we did one wipeout and he got past, and he did one and his rudder pintal broke, which was unfortunate for them – it was a cracking race we were having.” This is the third rudder Bourke has broken (others in the class have had also had similar problems) and it must be time for the Laser guys to tackle this issue.

Ainslie, who last year did the race on a Farr 52 enjoyed the action on a much smaller craft, but learnt what mixed fleet racing is all about. “There was one bit where we got rolled to windward by five big yachts” said Ainslie through gritted teeth afterwards “and Glenn got just one boat, and that cost us about fifteen boatlengths, which was just so annoying, there was just nothing we could do.” And what ship for next year for Ainslie? “I quite like the look of Orange actually!”

For Percy, in his first Round the Island, he was happy to admit that he was “hopeless on all the tides around Cowes.” This was also the first time Percy has sailed an asymmetric boat and he had to adjust from sailing in an environment where everyone knows the rules – to one where he was surprised to find that even port and starboard was too complicated for some. “You have a very small window [downwind], I was discovering” said Percy grinning, “you’re stuffed if you sail too deep because you just stop and you can’t sail any higher if a gust hits. Once or twice we had scary moments where we had to duck behind a port gybe boat – who was clearly not going to move! There were a lot of 40 to 45 footers sailing along dead downwind and they were just complete barriers whether they were on port or starboard they were going to do nothing!”
In the race for the big prize of the day, the Gold Roman Bowl, for all the IRC handicapped monhulls, it started to shape up as yet another race for the little boats. Although the big boats get out into clear space and (clearish) air, the benefit for IRC Class 11 and 12 is with sailing on favourable tide almost entirely around the course.

Stephen James’s Swan 48 Jacobite in IRC3 held the first place mantle for some time, but it was soon obvious that the little fellas would have it their way again. A number of J105s headed the leader board only to be spectacularly knocked off their perch by Giovanni Belgrano’s Whooper in Class 11 taking up the lead with a 24 minute cushion on corrected time from the other finishers.

It was a tense waiting the final outcome, with plenty of hot Round the Island talent in IRC 12 – the lowest rating class for the Gold Roman Bowl, anxiously looking at the computer screens for the answer.

Rosina of Beaulieu – the Rogers family Contessa 26, was looking to defend her race title from 2002 and 2003. It was not to be a hatrick for them, missing Whooper’s time by just three minutes and 25 seconds.

Whooper is a Laurent Giles 1937 design, and has just been restored. Owner Belgrano has recently been formerly announced as part of the design team of Team New Zealand. Whooper showed that she could be a threat after the recent Mees Peirson IRC Nationals, where she won class three.

Results and prize winners - Page Two