Fi left… twice

An honest account of my experiences of going totally out of my comfort zone. The photos in this blog are a combination from me, Marie, Clothilde, Sean, Kate, Rebecca and Sylvia. Thank you.

If you had told me a year ago, I’d be ticking off a bucket list item of completing the Fastnet race in one of the hardest years of the Fastnet, breaking halyards, doing night watches and spending a week in a small space with 5 other beautiful strangers I would have laughed. But this I did.

Before I start, a little about Emma. She is a 52 foot aluminium cruising vessel with a lifting centreboard. She has a large sail at the front called a “solent”, a smaller sail just behind that called the “staysail”, a main sail that can be made smaller by reefing, and it has 3 possible reefs, each making the sail smaller – so this means we can change the sails around for the different conditions. She also has a light wind sail called an asymmetrical spinnaker which is a pretty pink and red colour and is really powerful. Inside she has 6 berths, plus the central table that can be converted into a giant bed for pyjama parties. 2 bathrooms, a generator, 2 fridges and a large freezer.

Right – Fi did some racing. Here we go.

One grey afternoon, we walked to the airport in Brønnøysund to say goodbye to Fi (me) who was leaving for some new adventures.

A few months ago, I was asked by our lovely contact at Garcia (who built Away) if I wanted to do the Fastnet (one of the worlds biggest sailing races with 500 boats in this years race). As I picked myself up off the floor, and stuttered some words at Adrian about it in no discernible order, Fi and Adrian Sailing decided to become “Fi Racing and Adrian on Dog Sitting Duty” for a short time. I said “yes” having no idea about ocean racing, but that’s what I do – say yes to opportunities. Why not? I’ve sailed Away for 2 years in ocean swells and gale force winds, around tiny islands in Sweden and Norway, around massive ships in the Kiel and the standing mast route in the Netherlands. Plus we’d done the south coast of England, the Solent and the channel, and the north coast of France – plus all the other stuff. All good training for what was coming.

First up was the La Trinite/Cowes by Actual race, which would enable us to qualify as a team to race in the Fastnet.

I left Brønnøysund bound for an evening in Paris, then on to La Trinite sur mer the next day to meet up with the mighty 52 foot Garcia Exploration, named Emma which was to be my home for the next week. I met the wonderful team, Clothilde (skipper and the lovely person who invited me), Marie, Kate, Sean, Sylvia, Rebecca and Mark (owners of Emma).

After a big day of getting to know each other and prepping, I suddenly found myself untying lines, and in the La Trinite/Cowes boat race. Sitting on the windward side of Emma I pondered my life decisions as I reached out to some super massive sail boats for a high five.

We pass the start line and headed west to get out from the harbour and its islands and into the sea. Then, heading north, we did lots of tacking as the wind was on the nose. It was hard to learn tacking on what is basically the same boat, but entirely different, whilst at the same time figuring out where I fit in this new group. My experience with groups of people over the last few years has been… Adrian – and being the borderline painfully introverted, unconfident but capable type that I am, I was suddenly thrust into a group team situation and found myself calling on resources I hadn’t called upon since my working days (team work, communication etc etc) and crikey I’m rusty. Adding to that, my life consists of picking nice weather windows to travel in our home to exotic places, spending time with Adrian and my beautiful dog. Its all quite relaxed and enjoyable, and ocean racing is… well… challenging! My first watch was from 12 midnight to 4:30AM and so I learned a lot in the dark on a new to me boat, with new to me people. To say my poor little brain was overloaded is an understatement, and to be fair, I think I did okay.

The next few days were a blur of night watches, dealing with no wind at all, dolphins, storms with a fully reefed Emma and shouting at ships at the same time, before we finally found ourselves gybing up the English coast, and navigating the tides through the Solent before finally getting to Cowes and the finish line, and that much anticipated glass of French wine. 3 days, 7 hours sailing and 411 nautical miles.

I think I didn’t eat a hot meal for 3 days, as I was just putting food in for fuel, sleeping, trying to keep clean, and sailing. Huge challenge. I think as a team this was so great. We learned by the end of the race how to really mesh as a team and we nailed the finish. Oh my gosh, we have qualified to do the Fastnet race.

After a great sleep, we enjoyed the next day in Cowes, went to the awards ceremony and dinner, and planned to leave that night at 2am, or was it 12:30…? French time (boat time) or local time? We were all so tired, but we got the right tide to get out of the Solent, and back into the channel to get to Cherbourg for some more training and sorting out of Emma.

In Cherbourg, we were really fortunate that Mark (one of the owners of Emma) had organised for sailing great, Pete Goss, to come and mentor us for a few hours on Emma. We learned a lot from him, and these lessons we are taking into the Fastnet.

I get back to my home on Away, and my lovely little family a few days later, and we enjoy settling back in. It felt so good to be back in my comfort zone, Away, our home that we know how to sail without even thinking about it, that is set up exactly how we like it for sailing ease and safety. All the things I take for granted are here with me and I am oh so grateful for our world here.

We head south to Lervik in Norway and meet some wonderful new friends on the dock. Ahhh to be back cruising. It really is bliss, and whilst I know I can complete the Fastnet with Emma and her wonderful crew, Ocean racing is probably not going to be something I’m doing on a regular basis. I like chill out cruising too much – which comes with its own challenges of course! But at least I can turn on the motor in no winds, and pick the best weather window to leave, or change destinations on the fly.

We have a reasonably leisurely trip down the Norwegian coast a day or so after I get back. Huge thanks to Norway, for demonstrating to Adrian what the La Trinite race was like – no winds, 35 knots and triple reefed etc all in just one 30 mile passage. Once in Trondheim, I had a flight booked back to Paris, and then to Cherbourg to meet back up with lovely Emma and the crew to prepare Emma for the Fastnet. Whilst I am away from Emma and the team, there is a flurry of activity at the boat to get things done, and I study tide charts, autopilot settings and spinnaker pole setups in preparation. Oh yes, and I get some tricky sailing under my belt. Good practice. Thank you Norway.

After a day in Trondheim, I pack up my backpack again and head off to Cherbourg and the lovely Emma to prepare for the Fastnet. As I write this (post Fastnet) it is actually hard to remember what happened exactly, but I’ll give it a go.

The Fastnet.

I arrived in Cherbourg and went straight to Marie’s for a night of planning and cooking. My contribution would be to drink the wine and provide the entertainment whilst Clothilde and Marie created yummy smelling french dishes to be frozen for our race. After a good nights sleep after my big day of travel we were off to Emma to do some prep work – which mainly consisted of turning Emma the cruising boat into Emma “the kind of more like a race boat”, boat – i.e taking off all the non racing gear like kayaks and extra tins of food, and much to my dismay the stash of whisky and wine.

With Emma a lot lighter, and the team feeling pretty ready, we had our “photoshoot” with Garcia so they could social media the crap out of us (provided we were successful of course) and then we were off to Yarmouth where we had a berth booked for the night before the race. Oh I didn’t mention the cool jackets – how cool are the jackets!!!!! Matchy matchy!

We had some good practice coming across the channel. We picked perfect wind against tide to come into the Solent near the needles which, as we would find out, was excellent training. The forecast for the start of the race the next afternoon was looking more and more bleak.

We squeezed into Yarmouth, then squeezed through the bridge leading to the creek at Yarmouth, then squeezed up the creek, then we all held our breath as Clothilde professionally squeezed the 52 foot Emma into a space that I would not even have attempted to put Away into (Away being a full 7 feet smaller). PHEW, we were in! A night of planning, weather routing and sleeping is to be had. Oh yes, and we had to figure out how in the world to get out of the tiniest berth possible, without breaking the boat, breaking other boats, going aground or hurting ourselves.

The next morning, we have a chat again with Pete Goss who gave us some great last minute strategies and a good pep talk, then we were off, fortunately with enough water under us not to go aground, and enough people on board to shout when other boats were too close. We were so happy to get out of Yarmouth and into the 25 knots in the Solent.

Sailing downwind, we headed for the start line area, put up our storm sails up and passed the “identity gate” – right, we were ready for the start. The wind was building and building so a reefed main was up, and the staysail. Tacking towards the start line, we were 5 minutes from starting, and made our final tack to point for the line. All excited faces! And bang.

What happened? The staysail is suddenly flapping weirdly. Shit, the halyard has broken. Kate and I run to the bow and pull down the sail, and strap it in. What to do? We can’t put out the solent, there is far too much wind and it is forecast to build and build – right storm jib it is. Finally we cross the start line and begin tacking up the Solent behind the fleet, with the storm jib. We quickly learn that the storm jib does not tack very well, and we do complicated tacking by pulling out a little solent, then tacking, then pulling the solent back in. So hard.

After a while of this the mayday calls started pouring in. People were going overboard at the needles, one boat was sinking, others had broken masts. Pip Hare passed behind us with her Imoca, with apparently the same problem as us, they had broken their staysail halyard I think… Carnage. Marie in her wisdom popped her head out from her bunk and suggested we anchor and let this system go through – Oh yeah – we can do that! And so we spent the night where we started. Yarmouth.

After an evening of anchor watch, we put a new halyard on the staysail (which by now also had a broken furler) and got going out of the Solent and into the channel. I was off watch at this time, and was sleeping. When I woke we had taken the north channel at the Solent exit, and we were passing Swanage and still tacking. As the days went on, we tacked the coast of England, choosing to go straight through the Portland race with strong wind against tide at dinner time which made for a wild ride. Happily no Beef Bourgogne was spilled.

We chose to stay out in the channel at Salcombe which at the time seemed a silly idea as we lost all the wind. But we sent Clothilde up the mast to see if she could fix the staysail halyard anyways. As she was up there the wind came back, and we quickly brought her down as the wind built up to over 20 knots again. Turns out that the boats near us that stayed close to shore when we went out got smashed by this squall that came in and they retired due to weather, whereas by the time the squall got to us, it has lost some of its power and so we just enjoyed the ride out to lands end. Fortunately it was also at this time we realised that our autopilot (now named Charlie) didn’t have the right sized fuses, so with them changed we had a solid autopilot again! Phew!

At the Scilly Islands, we lost the wind again and were doing Christmas tree tacking backwards and forwards saying hello the Scilly’s a few times. We took the opportunity to update our families and of course social media. We also took the opportunity to rest a little, as we knew a new weather system was coming and it was going to be over 30 knots whilst we crossed the Irish Sea. And sure enough, I awoke the next day to a triple reefed main, staysail and a heeling over boat. And rain. We sailed in this until the fastnet rock, where it was shrouded in cloud. We saw a blob.

After tacking around the rock, Emma suddenly came to a screeching halt. The team was looking around everywhere… What’s happened??? There were no fishing pots around. Centreboard was quickly raised. Nothing, then lowered again and suddenly we were off again. PHEW and thank goodness for our centreboard. We believe we hit a drifting fishing net and we heard another report of someone else hitting it too. It was kind of fortuitous, as because of this dramatic turn of events, we did actually get to see more of the Fastnet as the clouds cleared slightly.

Heading back to the Scilly islands, we enjoyed the feeling of being over halfway – although it was about this time I was a little down and thinking that this was my life now and I was never going to get back home. Its funny what the mind does. It was this evening that Marie brought out her beautiful quiche which frankly lifted my mood to no end as I had been there when she cooked it prior to the race and it looked so delicious I was looking forward to it all week! So with a full tummy, and a brighter frame of mind, I went off watch and hit my bunk, falling asleep listening to delightful giggling upstairs on deck and feeling really safe.

The next day I awoke to stories of the spinnaker falling in the water as we had broken another halyard – so no spinnaker for now – also when it was brought back on board it had a 3m tear in it. I used my now honed pole skills and got us going wing on wing for a while until we could change course and the solent did its job.

As I woke up for my next night watch, we were in the shipping lanes and we had a fun night of calling ships, dodging fishing boats, and racing to the Alderney race. The Alderney race was the final hurdle for us before the finish line, but alas, the wind didn’t want to come, so we missed it by about 30 minutes. For those of you who don’t know, the Alderney race is a tidal stream north of Alderney and it can run at over 9 knots, and if we got stuck there, we’d literally be stuck going no where. So the watch at the time made the decision to go north of the race, costing us more time, but meaning we were safe from the currents.

Arriving in Cherboug, we had the solent, the staysail AND the storm jib up to get us speed to finish. Our friends on Voyager (another Garcia) came out to meet us with all the available husbands (alas Adrian was on dog sitting duty in Norway) and cheer us on as we finished the line! We were so so so excited to see them and cross the line! Whoo hooooooo! Cheering and maybe some tears from little old me! Sails down, motor on and some choice tunes to head into harbour. My favourite was blaring Elton John’s “I’m Still Standing” as we came into harbour. YEAH YEAH YEAH!

Once docked, it was celebrations!!! All the families were there, friends and partners. It was mad! Even the press came down and interviewed us. As I was the only loner, I was either on the phone or asking everyone when could we please pop the champagne???????? FINALLY, photos done, kisses, cuddles and congratulations all round were done, there was a glass of bubbles in my hand.

Wow, what a ride. Would I do another – yes probably, but it would have to be the same amazing team I just did it with.

There was about 450 boats that started, and about 200 retired. We finished because we are TENACIOUS!

The best part of a week of my life was spent on some amazing type 3 fun. What a ride.

To Rebecca – thank you for lending us your boat for this adventure and thank you for your endless positivity and support. And especially for cooking going through some of the roughest water I’ve ever been in!

To Sylvia – I loved falling asleep in my bunk listening to you and Kate laughing and competently sailing and keeping us safe. Thank you for your tenacity and your wind dancing.

To Kate – Thanks for the great night watches and story sharing. Thanks for supporting me when I wasn’t feeling super confident. I so appreciate you!

To Marie – Thank you for your friendship and support, your clear head and good decisions. Thank you for keeping us safe, and making me laugh. You’ve taught me a lot.

To Clothilde – thank you for being the skipper and bringing such a positive attitude to everything you do. You kept morale high, kept us racing, laughing and safe the whole time. What a legend.

Please enjoy some of these little clips too.