Rolex Commodores' Cup - Around the Island with Jamie McWilliam

by Jamie McWilliam on 21 Aug 2010 The great thing about the Rolex Commodores' Cup is the variation in the types of courses we do - windward/leewards, round the cans, an overnight offshore, and the legendary Round The Island race.

The terrible thing about the Rolex Commodores' Cup is when you discover that there are boats in your class that rate lower than you but on a 2-sail reach they go faster than you!

Darn. A long day, and a TOUGH one! But we're still in silver medal position, and with a double-pointer to come tomorrow we're all still focused. The Irish look well set for their maiden victory, but there are plenty of reasons this is a difficult regatta to win, and the forecast for tomorrow's wind remains in the high 20's, where anything can happen.

Anyway, enough about the future and a bit more about the recent past. Today's race was round the island, anti-clockwise, with a massed start at the Royal Yacht Squadron line, a beat out past The Needles with the tide, a reach along the south-west edge to St. Catherine's Point, then a run to Bembridge, a broad reach to the forts, and a fetch back home to finish at the RYS. A course of 50nm give or take the odd 'uh-oh, better not get too close' moment.

Mandrake and Blondie started at the outer end of the line to get the best tide and avoid any possible lulls under Egypt Point, but got slightly stuffed when (a) the lull never materialised for the boats inshore, and (b) they got rolled by two bigger boats which were in foot mode rather than high mode, which made it impossible to close gauge to the inshore guys. Rockall came off the middle of the line, covering their Irish competitor Roxy.

It was a bit of a frenzy of effort holding a clear lane, and while Blondie and Mandrake worked hard footing from the pin (it was almost entirely on port), Rockall stuck hard on Roxy's face tacking up the island shore - although Rockall was obviously going at a fair lick as the Class 2 boats (and maybe even the odd Class 1 boat!) failed to get past them. About two-thirds of the way up the beat as the leaders approached Hurst Narrows and the massive tidal race before the top mark, the tactics really kicked in as shifts were taken to stay in the strongest current, and both Blondie and Mandrake got hurt by a lefty coming in as they started to run out of the deep water. But they got in phase fast, and worked through a couple of boats into good positions.

And then, as the top mark approached, the sea state turned from 'lumpy Lamma' to something resembling a Toblerone... Fortunately both of us got through it in good shape and rounded in fourth and fifth respectively (although Lord knows we were close to joining the South West Shingles Yacht Club as when we crossed Mandrake right at the buoy we were just wrapping up a tack change in 12-foot waves, and only exceptional boat-handling enabled us to get round in good shape.

It was at this stage, as we bore off to a 115 True Wind Angle, that it became very swiftly apparent that Mandrake was off like a robber's dog, and Blondie had made the right move putting on the jib top early. Mandrake set off deep like a scalded cat, and Blondie went through Mariners Cove FAST. Rockall had already established a sizeable lead in their class, so all looked good! But as we approached St. Catherine's, the breeze headed and we had to tighten up hard which cost us a bit of our gain - although nothing terrible, we still had the lead on corrected.

The next leg was a shy kite over a lee shore to the East end of the island, and in the face of the increasing header we went with the Zero instead of the A4, which turned out to be a loser as the breeze lightened and lifted and Mariners rolled up to us with their A3, and the bigger boats behind rolled up with their big runners. We then peeled to the A4 which helped dramatically, and ran hard in 12-15 for about 10 miles, permanently suffering on handicap as it was minimal surfing, maximum waterline length, and the GS43s just kept rolling up to us. Mandrake was well through Antix by this stage, but still not enough on corrected, and Rockall was launched.

We gybed round Bembridge Ledge and had to suffer the horror of the Class 1 GS43 luffing like hell above the rhumb line to snuff us and Mariners, to the point where Mariners got a tow and we had to sail miles above polars to protect our air - infuriating as our class competitors rolled straight down the rhumb line! But fortunately we managed to hold off Codiam and got round Nab Tower in front of the pack - although still not far enough ahead of Mariners or Quokka or Coup Du Coeur.

The final leg home was a tight fetch along the island shore in the very puffy Southerly, basically playing the scary game between going high enough to stay out of the tide but not going so far as to run aground on the ever-shifting Ryde Sands, scene of some famous groundings and shipwrecks - including the HMS Royal George which sank here on 29th August 1782 with the loss of over 800 lives, and the less catastrophic but undoubtedly more embarrassing incident on 21 June 2009 when the High-Speed ferry from Portsmouth hit the sands right in the middle of the Round the Island Race, and had to sit there while 1800 yachts sailed past, no doubt with large grins on their faces!

Anyway, Mandrake and Blondie managed the process pretty decently but Rockall got unlucky and got stuck on the putty for quite a few minutes which enabled their pack to close up, and the boys had to work their tails off from there to stay ahead of Roxy. At the finish they managed a fifth, with Roxy in sixth, so all game on in Class 3 tomorrow, Rockall holding the class lead by four points from Roxy. It's unlikely anybody else has a chance to win this class barring disasters in the double-pointer last race.

Mandrake had a best-of-regatta fourth, leaving them fourth in class with third not out of the question, and Blondie had a fifth, leaving them fifth in class, needing to gain three places on Quokka in the last race to get second in class. On the overall front, the Irish look safe winners barring catastrophes but second to fifth are all to play for. The forecast is for 17-25kn tomorrow for the race around the Solent cans, and from our perspective we'd prefer it to be at the 25kn end of that range!

The only other thing to report is that the redress hearing in Class 3, race 6, was re-opened and Rockall was demoted to second from first after a re-assessment of the amount of redress time given. And that's definitely enough about that.

Everybody is fired up for a final big effort tomorrow, and we're looking forward to it. It's been a long and hard regatta, exactly as expected, and we've learned a lot. Looking forward to bringing it back to Hong Kong!

Cheers
Jamie

EFG Bank Mandrake (Mills 40) Class 1
Peter Austin
David Bedford (P)
Nick Burns
Peter Fletcher
Lauren Mead
Laurence Mead
Mark Parker
Tim Storey
Jonathan Taylor (P)
Ian Tillett
Simon Watson
Ben Williams

Blondie IV (King 40) Class 2
Nick Bishop
Iain Chapman
Anthony Day
Arthur Elliott
Chris Frost
Marty Kaye
Charlotte Lawrence
Jamie McWilliam
Tom McWilliam (P)
Tiger Mok
Louise Morton
Pat Pender

Rockall III (Corby 36) Class 3
Kirsty Apthorp
John Brinkers (P)
Mark Elkington
Ian Fleming
Joachim Isler
Tim Jeffreys
Dave Kenefick
Chris Opielok
Drew Taylor
Koen van Mierlo