Lighthouse on Plymouth breakwater.
Celebrations!
At 05:32, after 6 days 17 hours and 32 minutes we have finally crossed the finish line in Plymouth! 51 out of 299 starters. 3rd in our class of IRC1 A. That means brown medals! Last of all the finishers on adjusted time. 4th last over the line. We logged over 850nm on a course where the rhumb line distance was 605nm! That was some serious beating to windward! Surely we get a prize for that! We're so happy that we have finished what will go down in history as one of the toughest Fastnet races. As you can see once we made the Rock and rounded the Pantanious mark we flew back with the wind finally in our favour. After talking to the other crews in the "Famous Five", the grupetto of 5 stragglers at the tail end of the fleet, and replaying the race tracker, we were happy to find that they too had struggled with the same adverse weather conditions that resulted in our spaghetti course! ;) If you replay the race you can see the fleet leaders in the faster boats sailing to the Rock directly on a reach, then upon turning they had a perfect wind shift that allowed them to sail on a reach back! Lucky bastards! Their race wasn't half as bad as ours! ;) While chatting to a guy in the marina after we arrived he told me that, on Friday evening during the formal award ceremony the biggest cheer of the evening went up for all of the boats still out on course! That being the Famous Five of course.
In summary our race finished as follows: whilst chasing Lutine, who was the boat that we came across near the Irish coast as we approached the Rock, we were stuffed perfectly by a timely wind shift which Lutine profited greatly from. Lutine passed the Rock 74 minutes ahead of us and then sailed directly for the western most mark. Once we finally made the Rock the wind shifted around towards the south west which meant we had to beat towards the bloody western mark which was just 8nm from the Rock! Farthing came flying up behind us and suffered the same beat to the western mark. This took two hours and this was where Lutine really got away from us. Once round the mark we had the wind with us! FINALLY! Joy! We opened up onto a reach and hit seven to eight knots as we could finally sail a straight lined course down the rhumb line. Chasing Lutine (who were in our class and already out of sight) as hard as we could, we settled in for a heavy weather night as the next storm blew in. Farthing looked to turn back towards Ireland as they had a sail problem and we flew on over the Celtic Sea as we headed for the finish. You can see on the tracker that there were no further positional changes until the finish. During the next day the dolphins joined us en masse! We had a pod of about 30 playing about in our bow wave. It was amazing! I think one cheeky dolphin said that the bow waves on the faster boats who were there a few days before was much more fun to play in!
Finally we came in towards Plymouth in the early morning hours. Four miles from the finish line the wind was freshening with a few gusts up to thirty five knots. Then suddenly PING! The starboard side sheet parted for a second time! So a few quick repairs were waranted. Fixed in a flash. We were getting good at running repairs. Then back on course. Heading towards the finish line we pumped up the volume on the stereo and got "Eye of the tiger" blasting out of the speakers. We crossed the line with much back slapping, hugs and kisses all round. Finally we had made it back safe and sound. Then from out of nowhere we were boarded by H.R. Customs. 3 burly looking officers boarded us in full battle kit looking rather mean. Stereo off! And passports out. They were cool in the end as they realised we were a Fastnet Race competitor. They had missed seeing our race flag in the dark. It was then that I noticed one of the officers was in fact a 6ft 3inch woman! The customs gang left us and then our party began. The champagne flowed freely! Feeling rather tipsy and with some good sea legs we stumbled off to the showers to spruce up for the bar which was calling us.
