Me'Julie Fastnet Race 2005

Qualifying races

Overtaking QEII to windward at start of the Morgan cup.

One of the conditions for entering the Fastnet is that boat, skipper and at least half the crew must complete a minimum of 300 miles of Royal Ocean Racing Club races within the preceding 12 months.

We started our campaign with the St Malo Race 2004, a thoroughly gruelling event with a south-westerly Force 7 that gave us a dead beat all the way to Les Hanois, Guernsey. We weren't actually able to count it as a qualifying race (because it was just outside the 12 months before this year's Fastnet) but it gave us great confidence of our ability to cope in moderately tough conditions. Of 126 boats entered only 12 British and a total of 42 boats made it to the finish. RORC have posted results (we were sailing Doris J of Five Star, an identical boat to Me'Julie) and a race report.

Sadly, two of the crew who were with us in that race decided the Fastnet campaign wasn't for them, but we are fortunate to have attracted Pip Tagg who joined us in the autumn last year.

We were compensated by a magnificent race to Ouistreham in September last year, 110 qualifying miles. We set the spinnaker at The Needles and took it down at the finish, enjoying clear skies, bright sun followed by a full moon, and a delicious dinner (with wine) at sunset. We finished 4th overall out of 30 boats (in Doris J again) -- see RORC's results again. The only disappointment was that, within sniffing distance of French cuisine, we turned round at the finish and sailed straight home, something we have to do again this year with the St Malo because of lack of time as well as to give us more extended continuous time at sea as a build up to the 600 mile Fastnet.

In the autumn we entered one Hamble Winter Series race when we were privileged to be joined not only by Pip but also his brother Ricky Tagg and by Richard Ludlam, all highly experienced sailors, Pip and Ricky having almost made the Olympic team in the 470 class in 19[??], and Richard being a veteran of 9, yes nine, Three Peaks Races.

And in the spring this year we did two Warsash Spring Series races to hone our boat-handling skills as a team.

This year, we are racing in the Morgan Cup and St Malo races.

Morgan Cup Race

Morgan cup: four navigators, four strategies.

The course actually sailed was to special marks "Ocean Safety" laid to the south east and "RORC" to the south west of the Isle of Wight which you can see on [link to map]. Sailed in light weather, we missed out significantly by not going quite the right way relative to wind and tide in the dark after the first rounding of Ocean Safety. Being somewhat late getting back to Ocean Safety on Saturday afternoon, we missed out on a whole tide, and demonstrated that we obviously need more practice anchoring in 70 m of water. RORC posted our disappointing result where we noted that Doris J won! The RORC race reports also make interesting reading.

St Malo Race

The start off Cowes saw as charging over the line at the gun with the chute up. Initially, we tried to avoid the adverse tides by staying as close to the Isle of Wight as possible until we headed across the Channel (during the night) this time with a helping tide. Most of this 130nm leg was a in a Force 5 and slight drizzle. We rounded Guernsey Saturday morning but with dying winds our ETA in St. Malo soon slipped from afternoon to evening to midnight. Finally we had to give up due to a complete lack of wind or else none of us would have been at work the following Monday. At 2215 we were just 9 miles from the finish at St Malo, well within sight of the French coast (and well up amongst a number of faster boats), but with no prospect of getting any closer for several hours. Despite the disappointment of not finishing, the week-end was a valuable part of our build-up to the Fastnet (starting 7 August) for which we feel well prepared.

$Date: 2005-07-12 22:38:36 +0100 (Tue, 12 Jul 2005) $