A year afloat: to the Caribbean and back

Nanny Cay racing update

Sam and Alex Fortescue

Sat 2 Apr 2011 23:17

18:24.03N

64:18.13W

After a day off to recuperate, we raced back to Nanny Cay yesterday under a cloudless blue sky and unforgiving sun. Ian had made sure that we arrived at the start (this time we knew where it was) in time to practice our starts. The effort paid off as we skimmed past the committee boat, barely five metres out, and set off close hauled to starboard, heading for the windward marker. We were right in the middle of the fleet, and gaining on the leaders with our greater hull length...

Then disaster struck. In winching in the genoa tight, we'd put a 'riding turn' around the big electric winch - essentially a nasty little knot which becomes harder to undo the harder you winch. We'd winched in very hard, and it wouldn't budge. It meant we had to stand on starboard long after everyone else had tacked. Then we began to run out of sea, and still the sail was locked to the winch. Ian tried to take the strain off by attaching a new rope to the sail, and hauling in on a different winch. All of a sudden, we had a second riding turn. Glorious.

Tucked out of view of the rest of the field (and the committee boat) by a huge anchored schooner, we fired up the donk and kept the boat in the wind, taking the pressure out of the gib while we worked on the knots. This approach began to produce results, but it took time and soon there was a mighty honking, as a giant white catamaran bore down on us. She was the Necker Belle, part of the race, and the baby of Richard Branson. Using the engine again, we scooted out of the way, out consciences growing more guilty by the second. Then, the sail was freed and we tacked back into the main part of the fleet, which was rounding the windward buoy. Slotting like a missing brick into the wall of boats, we innocuously rejoined the race.

Then, it was all downwind sailing, dicing with an accidental gybe. There were some tactics around navigating through a clump of small islands, and we picked up some places. The wind picked up and we were suddenly flitting across the light waves at 9 knots. Unfortunately, the rest of the field must have been doing even more, because they slid past us one by one. A 44-footer steamed up from behind and passed us is if we were standing still. There was much muttering about (very) local wind conditions, but in truth, we don;t really know why we fell behind in the second half of the race. It's likely to be a whole raft of different mistakes we're making, so we'll have to experiment today when the competition continues.

Happily, we saw Branson's Necker Belle struggling to bring in a few tattered streamers of red cloth, which looked a if they had once been her spinnaker, so we weren't the only ones with problems. Then again, as we motored into Nanny Cay marina for the night, we passed the Branson boat already moored up, with the Virgin everything billionaire standing at the stern, chatting to some motorboaters. With long white-blond hair, he looks very much like the photos. Music chuirned out from his boat well into the night, and there were dozens of people milling about on his party deck.

Even the news that we'd chipped away at our earlier 11th place to come in 14th couldn't stop the crew of los Escapados from dancing merrily to the strains of reggae, calypso and other natty tunes. There was a great atmosphere around the marina from all the racing folk, and we bumped into one of the ARC skippers we'd met in Las Palmas - a peroxide blond character called Jacko, who apparently travels the world skippering boats for people.

Dominique and Marie-Christine at the Bitter End