Last Saturday May 19 saw the fifth and final race in the Spring Series for the cruisers. The series leader, prior to the race was Helena Ann with 3.3 points, being chased by Limbo Girl with 9 and Lady Jane with 11.
Your reporter was, along with skipper and owner, Hugh Redman, one of just two crew members on Helena Ann – barely enough in a good breeze to cope with this big (38ft) wooden boat. And a good breeze, for a change, it was, with the wind blowing at a steady 18 to 19 knots as we reached the start line at the harbour mouth.
The start was a slightly confused affair with the crew failing to operate the 5-minute timer correctly (well, how was I to know that holding the start button of the timer down a moment to long would re-set it to zero instead of starting it – in the old days we used a stop watch, you knew where you were with that). The skipper was not happy, but despite that slight mishap we made a reasonable start, following Mallard closely over the line. Unfortunately, Mallard, although first across was also going in the wrong direction and this took a little while to sort out.
Soon, however, with the sails sheeted hard in, we were beating out to sea, with the lee rail awash and spray spattering back to the cockpit, heading for the first mark. Slowly we started to pull away from the rest of the fleet, all except for Mallard who, despite Helena Ann’s fiercely competitive skipper regular chastisement of his crew for not working hard enough, remained resolutely ahead of us. (The crew, however, got his own back much later, when, after hauling in a good few metres of mainsheet, the skipper was heard to mutter, in an exhausted voice, “I’m getting too old for this!”).
A short tack was needed to make the mark and after a neat rounding of it we set of on a reach to the next buoy. The crew had now been given the wheel and holding the boat on course in the good breeze and typically choppy Rye Bay seas, proved hard work. The mark, however, was soon rounded and after a well-controlled gybe we were on a dead run with the wind right behind us. Then the decision had to be taken, do we use the spinnaker? A big and, at the best of times, an unwieldy sail, the answer was simple – with this wind and just two of us on board, no way! And we contented ourselves with goosewinging the genoa. Mallard, however, with a full crew, had no such problem, and up went his spinnaker as he accelerated further away from us. There was no staying with him now and he eventually crossed the finish line just 3 minutes ahead. We were followed by the 32ft Lady Jane, then Limbo Girl, by far the smallest boat in the fleet, and finally the 34ft Jemma.
The first four boats were all within a few minutes of each other and although we were pretty certain that even on corrected time (ie, after allowing for the boat’s handicap), Mallard would take the win, the big question was, would we retain second place? or would the better handicap of the smaller boats allow them to overtake us on corrected time? After a tense wait in the club house, mitigated later by a beer or two, we received the good news. We had remained in second place and with a score of just 5.3 points, comfortably took overall first place for the series from Limbo Girl in second with an accumulation of 11 points and Lady Jane in third with 15.
Congratulations go to Hugh Redman along with my thanks for allowing me to share the experience of sailing with him in his truly lovely boat, Helena Ann.
Photo: John Minter