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Blog 2 - The Fastnet
4 03/09/2007
Steve White in the infamous Fastnet race!
Steve Helming
Hello and welcome back to the latest in a series of blogs describing the adventures of the bluQube-sponsored Open 60 yacht and its intrepid skipper Steve White.
This edition covers Steve’s experiences of entering the ‘blue riband’ event immediately after Cowes Week, the infamous Fastnet race. For those of you not in the know, the Fastnet race, which started in 1926, is sailed on a 607 mile course that starts from the Royal Yacht Squadron off Cowes, to the Fastnet Rock just off the Celtic coast of Ireland, and finishes on a reciprocal course into Plymouth. Sounds easy enough, however in reality it is a bruising, boat-crunching battle against the wind, the tides and the relentless weather that tests the energy, will power and desire of all the crews that enter. The race is known in the sailing community as a ‘boat breaker’! And as you will read later in this blog, this is no exaggeration.
A fighting chance
The open 60 Class is very competitive, and usually well-funded. Most of the fellow entrants crafts were near ‘box fresh’ and each sported a fresh coat of sponsorship paint.
The problem faced by the ‘Spirit of Weymouth’, sponsored by bluQube, is not that the vessel is, at 9 years old, of a different generation to the new boats, but that it has had no "modernisation" at all through its life.
Open 60s are one of the fastest classes of sailing boat around, however, they are designed primarily to sail downwind. The other boats of the same generation as ’Spirit of Weymouth‘ have had lots of money spent on them to improve their performance upwind - the more cash spent on them, the faster they go, and the new boats of course come with these modifications from the outset.
Therefore in a downwind race there is a much more level playing field across the fleet, but upwind, without the upgrades and optimisation having yet been carried out to ’Spirit of Weymouth‘, Steve was at considerable disadvantage against the other boats in the vast majority of the first half of the race to The Fastnet Rock, most of which was upwind.
This did not mean that Steve and his crew would not compete – it would depend largely on the talents of the team (Steve and his co-skipper David Melville) to make the most of the conditions.
Coping with 40-knot winds
The weather conditions throughout the race were atrocious. In 40-knot winds, a wave ripped away the emergency man overboard buoy (an incident that caused some consternation with the coastguard) and the spinnaker, (at a cost of between £7,000 to £8,000). However yacht racers look after their own, and the crew was very grateful to fellow competitor Dee Cafari, sailing Aviva, for donating a spare immediately after the race. But ‘Spirit of Weymouth’ was not the only boat to suffer, of the 300 boats that entered the race a staggering 211 had to retire due to damage and breakages caused by the diabolical conditions.
Not for the faint-hearted or G’n’T brigade
Sailing in these challenging circumstances is not for the faint-hearted or for day sailors who fancy exchanging the G’n’T for a ‘bit of spray’ on their faces. The constantly changing wind speed meant that Steve and his teammate had to stay awake, changing sails, and simply holding the boat together, surviving on just 5 hours sleep over the whole race. Also on-board was journalist Peter Zimonjic, who under the race rules was strictly there as an observer. According to Steve he coped well with the conditions and although he felt a little queasy he slept most of it off. However because he spent most of the time thoroughly drenched he has since caught pneumonia, and is in hospital at the moment! In Peter’s series of reports for the press he recalls how David Melville described the ‘Spirit of Weymouth’ as a "submarine with masts on”. From Peter’s accounts of being constantly cold and wet, he felt this was a perfect analogy.
Boil in the bag treacle sponge
The food is surprisingly appetising though, that is if your culinary delights extend to ‘boil in the bag’ treacle sponge, pasties and peanut butter; and you need a lot of it. Steve’s wife Kim who is responsible for supplying all the on-board food supplies, estimates that 5-6000 calories of ‘fuel’ a day are needed to get through the race. But their spirits were maintained by their progress, at one point, just passing the Lizard lighthouse off the Cornish coast, they had the leaders in sight – the race was on!
A respectable finish
In the end the conditions almost beat everyone, but ‘Spirit of Weymouth’ finished a respectable 8th out of the 14 Open 60 rivals that also completed the race. Given all the circumstances, the age of the boat, the limited number of spare parts, and the level of funding, this was a real achievement and a testament to the skill, tenacity and sheer bloody mindedness of Steve and his co-skipper. Not that he spent much time celebrating. On finishing he went straight to bed and slept for an entire day; dreaming no doubt of his next event – The Silicon Cup which takes place on 27th and 28th September. Steve will be watching the regatta whilst providing corporate hospitality for bluQube customers, before competing in the Transat Jacques-Vabre two-handed race to Brazil in November, and then the single-handed return race which returns to Brittany just before Christmas.
Watch this space!
