Apr/May 09

April 25th
Our First regatta

Well have just completed our first and last regatta! To say it was a catalogue of errors may be being a little over the top but I think it's safe to say I have crossed that one off my bucket list!

I entered the oyster regatta thinking it was all about the parties, ... with perhaps a little gentle sailing in between, I had no idea this was serious racing, dave has since asked why I didn't ask - good question!  I don't even like it when the boat goes fast for God's sake, I also thought it would be a 'gentlemanly' type event with no -one taking it that seriously...... There were supposed to be 4 races - in the end there were 5, we did the first one!  The day before the racing started everyone arrived in Nelson's dockyard in Antigua and there was an absolute frenzy of boat cleaning - there were 2 reasons for this: firstly there was a prize for the "Concours d'Elegance" - which our good friends on Sophistikate (ange & Richard) were determined to win, she had guests on board and had them up cleaning at 6.30 on easter sunday morning!)  basically it is an award for the best presented boat, secondly in the afternoon was an "open boat" - you were given a special flag and if you were happy for people to come on board and view your boat - you flew the flag. Now lets be sensible, we have a dog, a very hairy dog,(so hairy Ange wouldn't even allow her boat to be berthed alongside us as her hair wafts over onto their boat!)  and 2 eccentric and messy children, add to that the fact that we live on our boat, where as many oyster owners 'visit' their boats and have a crew prepare for their arrival. Also I think we had almost the oldest boat on the fleet - so did I want someone inspecting my boat - NO, did I think spending 6 hours polishing my chrome bits with a toothbrush only to spend the rest of the day picking Molly's hair off the fittings - NO! Did I want to have to find the cupboard space to shove my dressing gown, hair driers (plural), iron, 4 laptops, 200 books - NO! so we politley explained - no-one was getting on our boat! that hurdle dealt with, we now had to put 'sail numbers' on our main sail - we had ordered these from the UK and we had to drop the main sail to attach them - sort of like iron on transfer. In the process of dropping the sail - disaster struck, werrett style and the bearings holding the main sail furling system in place collapsed,  several hours of graft, people up the mast, dave & peter (a good friend who flew over to race with us!) 'brainstorming' a variety of solutions - and we finally rigged something we thought might hold.

So full of anticipation we set off on tuesday morning for the start line. Role call was held on VHF radio channel 11, where each boat was required to declare their 'downwind sail' - I got confused and despite the predicted 20 knts of wind - boldly declared we would fly a cruisng chute! For those that can remember our atlantic escapades - we rarely fly a crusing chute over 15knts of wind - they are a large light wind sail and will rip or take the boat over in strong wind conditions. I have no idea what came over me so at the end of the role call I went back on the radio and asked if I could make an amendment... only to be told in no uncertain terms - it wasn't the done thing chaps!, we would have to fly the chute... we headed up the line where 30 boats were milling around in alot of wind, 10 minutes before the start we had to take serious avoiding action as a boat on a port tack whose name I won't mention,  refused to give way to ChilliOyster on a starboard tack and we had to do an emergency tack to avoid a collision - unfortunatley the same boat was not so lucky in race 3 when the same thing happened with a 62 ft oyster who T-boned her ripping a huge hole in the side as they jostled for position at the start line... - so much for not taking it seriously.

The race started... and we took off at a ridiculous angle and speed, I climbed out onto the side of the boat that was "out of the water" shut my eyes and prayed for it to end, the dog wet herself - the race was 19 miles long and I had another 3/4 hours of this! I did try to be brave honestly but I just don't get it! I love speed, I rode a motorbike - but the idea of my home skimming along the water sideways with everything falling around just doesn't do it for me - I have really tried to be a proper sailor  - but i'm afraid after nearly one year and just over 6000 miles at sea - it is not going to happen. Then to add to the fear came the humiliation! Given the problems with the main sail which just wouldn't set correctly, and the fact that we were competeing with boats years younger than us with superior hull design - we slowly fell behind - until in the end we radioed the committee boat and did the gentlemanly thing (well somebody had to) and told them not to wait for us to cross the finish line before they started the next race!  We informed them we wanted to finish the course however, so we approached the turning buoy - put in a tack to turn the boat through 90 degrees and head back down the course and... Jordan, bless him, didn't look up as he pulled in the foresail, thus it caught on the mast spars and ripped - our brand new 150% genoa! This was supposed to be a gentle days sail!  Finally as we approached the finish line they were just starting class one in race 2 - so as we approached the race marker buoy - 10 other boats came hurtling towards us! Needless to say we retired from race 2 (gracefully) and headed to the next anchorage for a large V&T! We had a pleasant evening at anchor in a deserted little bay and decided to "retire" from the race the next day in order to try and get our sails fixed. However when we came to pull up the anchor with 30m of chain holding it - the windlass failed - so it all had to be pulled up manually! Just something else to be added to our "to be fixed list!"  So whilst the rest of the fleet raced round the island up to a lovely bay on the west coast - we pottered round to falmouth harbour to have our foresail, mainsail and windlass fixed!

And that was that I'm afraid - we followed the fleet around the island for the rest of the week in a hire car! (well we'd paid for the dinners in advance!) Jordan was snapped up by another boat - "Twice eleven",  and raced with them every day so he had a ball and learnt alot. They came third in their class and Jordan went on to win the Competent crew prize - given at the prizegiving, which is another story! But I won't go into it all now as I guess only about 5% of you will have continued reading this far! But the bottom line was they only booked us 2 seats not 4 so we stood for most of the £100 dinner! They said it was our fault as I must not have booked the places.... they have sinced offered a refund but you can imagine the evening was a little bitter sweet. And to add to the perspective - in addition to the disaster already mentioned during the 4 days of racing there were 2 broken arms, 4 boats hit rocks, one so badly it tore a huge hole in the front, several boats lost/ripped/tore their sails, one lost their prop when sails got stuck under the boat.

 I have reassured Oyster that the experience has not put us off - and next year we may consider attending their reggata.... on a cat!!

 Anyway with that experience behind us we are now finally in the BVI - where I always wanted to be - we arrived at 9am yesterday morning having sailed the 180 miles from antigua. We left Jordan behind - he was invited to use his new found skills on Bombardino who is racing in the real regatta! And when I last heard he was heading to guadaloupe in order to do a 40 mile race back... God help him.