Back down to earth

Navigator Ian Moore describes his victorious trip in the BMW Round Ireland Race on Eamonn Crosbie's Calyx Voice and Data

Yesterday afternoon we spoke to Ian Moore, back home in Cowes having just finished the BMW Round Ireland Race on Eamonn Crosbie’s Ker 32 Calyx Voice and Data. At the time he didn't know if his team had won overall, and he hasn’t been to sleep - since crossing the finish line in Wicklow on Wednesday night Moore went “straight from the bar to the airport”.

Since then victory has been confirmed for the little Irish racing boat and Crosbie adds the BMW Round Ireland Race to his growing list of successes for the boat normally named Voodoo Chile.

This year’s Round Ireland was a punishing one. The start was delayed because of gale force winds and all round the course (starting and finishing in the Irish Sea port of Wicklow via a clockwise circumnavigation of Ireland) has been characterised by strong winds and large seas.

Moore praised the race officials for postponing the start by four hours to let the worse of the gale through, before they got underway on Friday evening in 25 knots of breeze on the nose. Moore describes the first part of the race: “It was a beat all the way to the Fastnet Rock, I mean a real beat, not a fetch. It was southerly-going down the Irish Sea and then westerly going across the bottom bit. It wasn’t horrendous rough, but it was unpleasantly rough the whole way.”

After rounding the Fastnet Rock, things got a little easier and then, says Moore, the wind came back in to 25-30 knots, although now they were under spinnaker. “We overtook a load of boats going down there [up the West coast], including 40 and 44 footers just pushing it with the spinnaker up. We put the kite up before everyone else and took it down after everyone else.”

During this leg they sustained some damage, blowing out one spinnaker, several spinnaker sheets and also the spinnaker halyard. “It was just silly things like treating it like a day boat rather than an offshore boat: Leaving the halyard in a jammer rather than putting it on a winch, just things you kind of forget about because it’s a small boat,” commented Moore.

For Moore, who at present is normally seen at the back of Dr Hasso Plattner’s maxZ86 Morning Glory, navigating on a small boat like the Ker 32 had its challenges. “You can’t sit in the nav station and play with your toys! You have to hike out!” he laughs .

Navigation was done on a RaceVision with weather data coming though on a GPRS mobile phone. “It was enough to keep us on top of the weather situation,” comments Moore, “but quite frankly a lot of it came down to just common sense tactical decisions and tide and really just pushing the boat.”

In the eight man crew, all regulars, were Crosbie’s two sons David and Allan who did much of the steering. Moore was in praise of the crew and described them “really good bunch of young guys.” He is also highly complementary on how well prepared the boat was before the race. This was Crosbie’s second Round Ireland race, his first was two handed, aged 23 on a Ruffian.

Taking five jibs (no1 through to a no5) and a jib top, the crew did a lot of sail changes to keep the boat on its toes and towards the second half of the race were being more aggressive about throwing reefs into the main when necessary too.

Moore also liked the boat; “It’s a great piece of kit, it really is. It’s the sort of boat that makes you want to push it because you can - it’s got all the toys. It’s a proper little racing boat.”

One of the main turning marks of the race is Rathlin Island, the most northerly point of the course and the gateway back into the Irish Sea. Because of the very strong tides around the island it plays an important part in determining the result of the race.

Calyx Voice and Data managed just to squeak around in time before the worst of the opposing tidal stream, but it wasn’t as easy as that as Moore explains: “We kind of got hammered. There was nothing we could do about it, we got in out of the tide as long as possible and the tide was just turning against as we got to the east end of Rathlin. We just got round the corner and were sneaking away when we got slammed by 45 knots of breeze on the nose.”

Although forecast this breeze was not expected so far to the east, so took them by surprise. They took the mainsail down, so as to not risk blowing it out and being unable to finish the race, and were actually under bare poles for about eight minutes says Moore.

On the final stretch home, heading south, they found themselves behind Chris Bull's J/120 Jazz at the Mew Island checkpoint - over an hour on corrected time.

This was a good leg for them and was conducted on Moore’s old stamping ground. “Coming back down the Irish Sea it felt like I was back at home and it was a case of ‘we need to go over here as the tide turns earlier.’ It felt like I was 19 years old again sailing out of Carrickfergus Sailing Club.”

Like all good breezy offshores the wind died away for Crosbie’s crew as they approached the finish line. “The big countdown was beating Jazz last night [Wednesday]” says Moore. “We were racing the clock, we had to be in by twenty past midnight, and we were four miles out when the wind dropped to like 2 knots and we ghosted in just in time: All highly stressful.”

And so straight to the bar they went, changing out of their drysuits that hadn’t been taken off for the entire four days of racing.

Calyx Voice and Data finished with an elapsed time of 4 days, 5 hours and 38 minutes, which put them 45 minutes ahead of Jazz on corrected and winner overall.

Conditions on board describes Moore were “heinous really - it was wet it was cold and pretty miserable." They did manage to get some sleep, but not much, running a basic watch system, which was heavily modified according to the level of drama on board. This appears to have been high most of the time: “We needed a lot more people on the rail for all the upwind stuff, and we need a lot of people of deck when it was blowing 30 knots and we had the chute up.”

Although now convinced that he won’t do the race again on a little boat, Moore would like to tackle it on a maxZ86 which he says could do the race in under two days.

Already forgetting about the hardship Moore is philosophical about the race. “It was good to get back to what we used to do. It's not something I would like to do everyday but good fun and it was awesome, a good thing to do now and then - just not every week!"