Start and first day on the water

July 22, 2023

We continued to prepare the boat and ourselves for the race.

In the meantime RORC announced that the race, scheduled for Saturday, would not be postponed irrespective of the wind predictions. 

We started at 13:30 UTC with 23 knots of wind after having hoisted G-4 with one reef in the main sail. We had to consider that any boat which would have passed the starting line within 60 seconds prior to the start time, would receive a present in the form of a penalty of two hours (so added to our elapsed time start time-finish time). Not a nice present.

In spite of these circumstances, we made a very good start and we arrived as one of the first boats in our Class, when passing Hurst Castle.

In the previous days we talked a lot about the option to steer about 90 degrees to the North-West when passing Hurst Castle. 

Considering all factors such as wind direction, wind force and danger when passing the Needles close by, we decided to use the Bathing Bay instead of the Needles passage.

The wind did not get exhausted and continued to blow at 35-38 knots.

Half way from Hurst Castle and Anvil Point, our 20 years old G-4 (made by Reima in Finland using Cuben Fibre). The sail was taken down and replaced by our orange-red coloured Storm Jib (also made by Reima in Finland, but say 10 years ago).

We continued to Anvil Point. It was a battle against nasty waves, created by strong winds.

At that moment we had not decided yet to pass Bill of Portland to the South (at minimum 7 Nm) or hug the Coast, like Pintia did. 

Then we observed that one of our Crew Members started looking very pale. We could not convince him to go inside the boat, so he stayed outside. We were conscious and we realised right away that we might have to retire and look for a port with decent accomodation. Boj suggested Poole, at a moment when we passed the miridian and was at a distance of 8Nm.

We retired from the race and headed for Poole. There we found a relatively good hotel ajacent to the marina where we got a berth.

This was the end or our Fastnet Race 2023, much to our regret.

Fortunately our sick Crew recovered the next day already.

At 8 PM we departed from Poole, minus one. The wind hardly died and we arrived Monday AM at Chantereyne Marina in Cherbourg.

Winsome remained in good shape.

We now have to sail her to Cowes and prepare her for the first race of Cowes Week Regatta 2023.