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A pitifully light forecast prompted Royal Southampton YC to bring forward the start of the Poole Bar Double to make sure that the little boats would get through the Hurst narrows before the tide turned and only send the fleet as far as Christchurch Ledge.  It seemed like a good call at the time, but the weather on 17th July refused to behave with the result that we were back alongside at Hamble Yacht Services in time for lunch!

We figured that the smart thing to do was to start on port gybe and head across towards the Island to get the best of the tide, which paid off and soon saw us leading the fleet down the Solent.  We were overtaken by the B45, Kia Kaha, on the reach across to Christchurch Ledge.  She pulled away from us as the breeze built to around 14 knots on the beat back into the Solent, but we kept her in sight as we headed back toward the finish off the mouth of the Beaulieu.  We reduced the lead on the water to less than 3 minutes as the wind dropped on the approach to the finish, giving us a winning margin on corrected time of over twenty minutes on both Kia Kaha and J109, Jura, who finished third and took second place overall.

The original plan was that Tom would race the Round the Island Race double handed with Ben Rogers,  but we finally raced three up because Natalie was available after all and Tom’s shoulder is still not fully recovered from his bike accident in February.

Everyone was speculating that the race would be slow with little wind.  This was certainly the feeling at the start, with only a few knots of breeze from the south west.  Despite her scarred memory of the 2015 Fastnet when Tom put Mostly Harmless the wrong side of the line in a drifter and we took two hours to get back to the right side, Natalie asked him to helm the start.  We secured possibly the second best start in the 90 strong Division 2 fleet, bettered only by Shirley Robertson (who demonstrated that she hasn’t  lost the touch that secured two Olympic gold medals) in her Sunfast 3300, Swell.  The photo above, taken from the shore a couple of minutes after the start shows Mostly Harmless (circled) with most of the Division 2 fleet behind and to leeward and already about to overtake a fleet of larger boats that had started ten minutes earlier.

The wind built slowly as we headed west down the Solent.  We remained generally in good shape, along with some of the other J105s who were more than holding their own against bigger and theoretically faster boats.  We picked up more places at the Needles by going inside the Varvassi wreck (these days we have three waypoints, very close together, to help us find the way through) but, being shorthanded, were overtaken while hoisting the spinnaker by a gorgeous vintage Colchester smack that briefly rolled us to windward.  We later switched from A2 spinnaker to our code zero to good effect and soon realised that, far from the race being the slow one predicted, we were well ahead of the normal schedule, arriving at St Catherine’s before lunchtime.  Frustratingly, we could see at least one J105 ahead, William Newton’s Jelly Baby, which we tailed as we headed across Sandown Bay to Bembridge Ledge under spinnaker again.

We dropped the kite at Bembridge Ledge although others flew spinnakers for part of this leg, before a fast close reach from the Ryde Sands posts that demanded hard work from Ben and Tom trimming jib and main respectively through the shifts and gusts coming off the Island.  We remained just over a minute behind Jelly Baby and four minutes on corrected time behind Swell at the finish, but over eight minutes behind  Andy Roberts’ Jin Tonic which once again led the J105s home.  13th in Group B and 7th in Division B2 was not our best Round the Island results by any means but, with an elapsed time of 7 hours 51 minutes, the predicted slow drifter turned out to be one of our quicker roundings.

Myth of Malham retirement and Fastnet withdrawal

Tom was joined by Tori Davies for the Myth of Malham Race around the Eddystone and back at the end of May, racing double handed with the intention of using the race to get most of the qualifying racing miles for the required 50% of the prospective Fastnet crew. Tori took a few photos along the way.

The outcome was not as expected, but valuable in that it showed that Tom’s shoulder is not yet fully recovered from his cycling accident earlier in the year and Tori’s historic ankle injury was likely – since confirmed – to require a more serious operation than she was hoping and will leave her on crutches through July and off-games for much longer.  So no Fastnet this year, but Tom has 18 Irish Sea crossings under his belt and Tori has clocked up quite a few as a veteran of Fastnet, Round Britain and Ireland and Round Ireland races so both have already got the tee shirt several times over.

We started the race well and, as the bottom rated boat in Class 3, could see we were leading our class on handicap for much of the run down the Solent and were in good shape across Christchurch Bay.  In a failing wind, we stuck closer inshore than most of the fleet as we headed out towards Portland during the evening but then made a poor tactical call, speculating on the wind dying completely across the whole course and failing to appreciate that boats out to sea had sufficient wind to continue to make progress against the tide.  The wind filled in during the morning and built to Force 5/6 approaching Start Point and around Bolt Head, peaking at 28 knots off Salcombe.  Rounding the Eddystone, we found ourselves beating into a very lumpy sea and realised that the injuries in the crew meant that it would not be smart to carry on and that the Fastnet would not be possible this year.  So we turned left for Plymouth, also abandoning our plans to do the Morgan Cup a fortnight later.

Playing with dolphins while Morgan Cup competitors drifted westward

Two weeks later, while the rest of the RORC fleet was heading west in light airs to Dartmouth for the Morgan Cup, we left Mayflower Marina at 0600 to deliver Mostly Harmless east back to the Hamble.  With little wind forecast and what there was likely to come directly from behind, we had topped up the fuel tank and brought along spare fuel in jerry cans so we could motor the whole way home.  We saw plenty of the RORC fleet coming the other way (and were happy not to be sharing the drifting conditions with them).  We were also joined by a school of dolphins (we can’t be sure whether there were two, or a single pod who chose to come back and play a second time).  These encounters never stop being very special!

 

Having been vocal in our support for decision to move the finish of the Fastnet Race to Cherbourg and with few other options for a summer holiday because of Covid restrictions, we will be heading out to the Fastnet Rock again this August.

We will be joined by long standing crew members Tori Davies and Robert Stevenson.  With a crew of only 4, and Natalie tied up with exams, Tom and Tori will be securing the qualifying miles (half the crew must do 300 miles in qualifying races in the 12 months before the event), racing double handed in the Myth of Malham Race round the Eddystone Rock and Morgan Cup racing to Dartmouth.

Mostly Harmless’s 2021 season got off to a slow start as a consequence of Natalie needing to focus on studies for her physiotherapy MSc and Tom coming off his bike at the end of February, sustaining injuries to his right shoulder and left elbow.  Rather than risk Tom’s recovery, Mostly Harmless scratched from the JOG race on Good Friday because of a breezy forecast and retired a few legs from the finish on Easter Sunday.

Ben Rogers joined Tom for JOG’s Salcombe Gin Sopranino Race on 1st May, a light airs event out to West Princessa buoy, securing third overall in the double handed class and fifth in Class 2.

Jonathan Clark joined Tom in mid May for the first day of the JOG Home Ports Regatta.  After making a great start in 12 knots of wind and leading the race on handicap at times during the first half hour, the crew the lost the will to live when the wind died to nothing off Ryde and, with the forecast suggesting that the wind would remain very light for a few hours longer, decided to drop the sails, turn on the engine and head home.

 

Despite the late start to the 2020 season, it felt as though Mostly Harmless had done a lot of sailing by the end, even if Covid-19 restrictions means that she had gone no further east than the Owers or west than the Poole Historic Wreck Buoy and never had to use the navigation lights.

It would have been nice to have closed the season with the same form that we had shown from emerging from lockdown until early September  but it was not to be.

It seems that a lot of winch grinding and pulling on sheets and halyards has overstressed Tom’s shoulder and upper arm, thoroughly smashed up in a skiing accident at Christmas 2018, leaving them prone to fatigue and pain.*  The outcome is revealed in the retirements shown in the results of the final events in the Junior Offshore Group and Royal Southampton YC events in late September and October.  Natalie, a veteran of multiple operations on her own shoulder and now studying for an MSc in physiotherapy, has now advised exercises for the winter to make sure we are in good shape for the 2021 season.

Photos above are from the RSYC Autumn Double on 10th October, and were taken by RSYC’s Dave Martin before we took the decision to call it a day.

Photos below by Rick Tomlinson are from the JOG Final Wrap on 19th September, before Tom’s shoulder said it wouldn’t take any more abuse.

 

* the accounts of the races since late August, starting with the JOG Home Ports Regatta, suggest that we should have spotted the problem sooner

If things go wrong when racing double handed, it’s pretty hard to recover.  This was the story of the IRC Double Handed Championship for Mostly Harmless, despite all the omens for us being pretty good.

We made the starting area on the Saturday in unusually good time and well prepared, but still managed to be late at the line and at the wrong end, got most of the shifts up the beat wrong and were unable to recover offwind.  Race two, in a bit more breeze, was going ok and we then made great progress (keeping higher than our immediate competitors) on a marginal spinnaker reach, only to mess the drop sufficiently thoroughly (in common with a number of others around us) to call it a day and head home.

Notwithstanding the feeling that we might have been jinxed by our preparations and being in good time on Saturday, we were in  unusually good time and well prepared again on Sunday.  But Natalie made a great start this time, on the  line at the favoured end.  Our strategy for the beat was slightly compromised by higher rating boats being reluctant to tack on a shift, but it was sufficiently sound to put us ahead of the other similarly rated boats in the fleet at the first mark.  Then Tom discovered on the spinnaker hoist that he had rigged the sheet wrongly and, despite recovering several places on the second upwind leg and subsequent run (even though a coaster got in our way) to improve on our result in race 1, we decided to give race 4 a miss and return to HYS for a bit of bimbling in the autumn sunshine.

Perhaps we might have received more attention from photographer Paul Wyeth if we had looked a bit more competitive.  He took some great photos of other boats, but the only appearance of Mostly Harmless in the gallery was a glimpse of a big white and red kite in a very crowded finish on Sunday morning.

Another long coastal race with JOG, this time heading out to the east from the start line at Gurnard to the Owers mark off Selsey Bill before returning to the Solent, a round trip of 48 miles.

With a westerly, it would be a downwind benefit for J105s on the outbound leg, with the prospect of an upwind slog on the return with a struggle to sail to our handicap.  Mostly Harmless led the race to the Owers mark, arriving with a lead of 4 or 5 minutes over the fully crewed J109  Just So.  With the breeze at 16 knots, a gust caught the spinnaker during the drop and it went in the water, allowing several boats to catch up and round ahead while we were trawling.  But despite sailing double handed against crews of five in our closest rivals on the beat back to Gurnard, we managed the windshifts well and overhauled all but Just So (which was 15 minutes ahead by the finish) to finish second on the water and on handicap.

The soaking wet spinnaker removed any choice about joining Sunday’s Royal Southampton YC’s doubled handed race out to the the West Princessa mark to the south east of the Isle of Wight as it needed to flying to get it dry!  The conditions at 10 o’clock were not promising: all the forecasts suggested a very light breeze.  And so it turned out. So we hoisted the spinnaker to dry it out and, with virtually no wind, decided to retire  rather than face a few hours drifting until the wind filled in.  This turned to be a good decision: all but two of the fleet eventually retired too.

 

JOG normally runs a couple of races over a weekend at this time of year, the first outbound to Poole on the Saturday and the second back to Cowes on the Sunday.  With Covid-19 restrictions in mind, JOG organised a race to Poole and back over the Saturday of the bank holiday weekend, followed by a race within the Solent on the Sunday.

It was breezy and cold when we left the Hamble, with a 20 knot northerly blowing as a consequence of a low sitting over the north sea.  With gusts of 25 knots we elected to put in a reef, although the wind was forecast to moderate a bit later in the morning.  Racing double handed against a fleet that was mostly fully crewed (or close to fully crewed, after allowing for Covid-19 restrictions), we took the start cautiously but were soon reeling the rest of Class 2, including another J105,  Jacana, racing with a crew of 5.  We lost Jacana while shaking out the reef and were never able to recover the ground, despite leaving the rest of Class 2 behind on a quick white sail reach to East Hook buoy off  Sandbanks.

Some of the fleet hoisted spinnakers for a short leg from East Hook to the Ancient Wreck Buoy close to the end of the channel into Poole Harbour.  We were double handed and the leg was very short so we elected not to risk it, so full marks to crew of Mzungo, a Sunfast 3200 sailing double handed for hoisting theirs.  The decision was probably critical since, although we held second place on the water behind Jacana all the way back to the finish at Cowes, our lead over Mzungo was never enough to make up for the handicap penalty carried by a J105 compared to a Sunfast 3200 so we had to settle for third place overall.

Six hours of white sail reaching in Force 5, with the wind shifted backwards and forwards through about 25 degrees and requiring constant trimming of both main and jib was exhausting – with the result that we decided that we didn’t have enough energy for Sunday’s race and our muscles needed a rest!

Rick Tomlinson was out, both acting as safety boat for the JOG fleet and taking photos.  Proofs of Rick’s photos of Mostly Harmless at Hurst above and below.

 

With Cowes Week cancelled (leaving us as custodians of the Commodore’s Challenge Cup for another season), Royal Southern Yacht Club organised a four day regatta over what would have the been the opening of the big event.  The sun shone but the settled high pressure made for mostly light and shifty conditions and racing being abandoned on the final day.  Still, it was the nearest thing we’ve had to a holiday in this Covid-19 blighted summer!

We entered Mostly Harmless in the double handed IRC class but when the class was cancelled because of a lack of interest we opted to race as the only double handed entry in the fully crewed IRC Class 2, accepting the inevitable penalty on round the cans courses that Tom had to rush around the boat even more frantically than ever doing the job of several people at once.  This applied not only at the turning marks but also between races, particularly on between races 3 and 4 on day 2 when the race officer’s enthusiasm to get the fleet away while there was a breeze left us floundering, unprepared and unable to recover our starting deficit.

Other than a glorious race 2, which we  led on handicap from start to finish and secured line honours, our results were undistinguished, leaving us hiding behind our short handed excuse!

This regatta was sandwiched between the RORC Round the Wight race and the Royal Southampton YC Island Double.  We retired from the former when approaching Yarmouth.  It was blowing 20+ knots and, short of sleep after a very hot and sticky night in London, we figured that we wouldn’t have enough energy left to be safe in the second half of the race.  The contrast in the conditions for the latter race could not have been greater and, given the prospect of no wind, we were among the many competitors who decided to stay at home.