Day 1

Tuesday 28^th May 12.00

Position – 49 30 91 N 06 12 09 W

Approximately 25 miles due south of the Scillies

My first day of the race has not gone at all well.

I have three observations to make

1. RTFI – for the uninitiated – Read The Instructions (with an added expletive)
2. Never follow an Italian (sorry Marco if you read this)
3. If things look too good to be true, they probably are

In short, the start went pretty well, even though I was 30 seconds late crossing the line and coming out of Plymouth Sound I seemed to be going well with a lot of much faster boats around me.  This seemed to get even better after a few hours of a stiff fetch into 30kn of SSW as I was still hanging on to the tail of Andrea in his open 50 who was still in sight a couple of miles ahead and only one other class 1 boat just to Leward – Woo Hoo, this is OK.  At about 16.30 something made me look at the SI’s and there it was, like a beacon blinking at me – The course, leave Eddystone rocks to Starboard…….. I was gutted, turned round and went back for 17 miles to round the rock.  By 11.00 I had made it back to where I had been at 16.30 having sailed an extra 35 odd miles.

I had a chat with my sailing companion Boris about the situation and he just said ‘you’re a dick’.  Now I should introduce Boris – he is a little teddy bear about 6 inches tall – Boris the Beagle Bear.  We had only met the day before when he was presented to me by Victoria and it looked like we were getting off on the wrong foot. Obviously he didn’t actually say ‘you’re a dick’ because he is a stuffed teddy, but I know that is what he was thinking – I could see it in his eyes. So I told him that I didn’t want that sort of slagging off and that some encouragement would be better, but he ignored me, so I put him face down in the chart table to have a think about his attitude. This morning he was still there and not willing to look at me, so I have given him more time to think about where we go from here!

I have tried to come up with some positives and there aren’t many as I suspect for the next few days at least I will be tail end Charlie with a lot of ground to make up, but the mighty Beagle is going well in these strong winds on the nose – so hopefully I can get myself back in the race.

BFN

C