The beginning of a Stellar voyage
For the past 18 months Barda has berthed next to a solidly built cruiser called Stella, owned by Ian Baker, a chap that I met many years ago when I was newly married, living in sleepy Partridge Green and without a boat.

Ian is an engineer at heart and only recently came to love sailing more than motor bikes. He raced over to Dieppe with us last year as crew and was utterly underwhelmed by the squall and rough weather we caught on the way home (pictured on that trip having a snooze on the way over).

Deep in his cups, Ian revealed a desire to sail off into the blue yonder. To be honest I took all this with a pinch of salt, but slowly Ian taught himself how to handle Stella single handedly and gradually put her into ocean crossing fitness. He did a couple of shake-down cruises to the channel islands this year and moved onto the boat, selling his beloved motor bikes.

Then few days ago I came down to the mooring to check on Barda to find Stella gone. As far as I can tell, Ian without a word to anybody, quietly slipped his lines on 4 September 2008 and set of on his great adventure. The last he told me was that in easy legs, learning along the way, he was heading for Brazil; Ian if you read this then you have Barda's best wishes riding with you and I really hope you make it. Please drop me a line so we know you are OK.

SYC Autumn Series 2008, Race 1 Sunday 7 September

My apologies for the Barda blog being a bit quiet of late. A bunch of us flew off to spend a week bareboat cruising in Turkey, followed by yours truly going down with pneumonia which has not been a barrel of laughs.

Consequently when the first of the Sussex Yacht Club Autumn Series races came around, Barda was, like myself, in a fairly shabby state. On the Saturday I had a walk on Shoreham Beach (see photo above) to look at the racing area, which after a few days of a strong south westerly was less than inviting. Combined with my wheezy chest and both Nigel and Jason being away on holidays, the rough seas encouraged me to text the remaining crew to stay in bed as we wouldn’t be racing. I awoke on Sunday morning to find the forecast force six had failed to arrive, the raging seas had calmed and the rest of the SYC fleet were out to play. Bugger.

I spent that Sunday and the rest of the week sulking. Matters were not helped when I realised that the following weekend was the Littlehampton Race and overnight stay, an event Barda doesn’t really do. We took our old J24 on an earlier year and missed out on the dinner at Littlehampton Yacht Club as it was oversubscribed, and I haven’t bothered ever since. Perhaps next year.

SYC Autumn Series 2008, Race 2 , Sunday 21 September

Jason was finally back from his marathon French road trip with Barbara, so joined myself Nigel, Maggie, Daff and Rob aboard Barda to go through the midday lock.

The weather was set fine with a nice if shifty 2-3, but Barda seemed to be rather more in tune with my poor health than was good for us, with a smoky exhaust suggesting some TLC was overdue not to mention a dirty bottom. Normally I try and dive on the boat every couple of weeks to clean of the underwater growth, but obviously with my lungs in their current state using scuba is out of the question. Being the all round star that he is, Nigel had donned a wetsuit earlier that morning and paddled around the waterline removing all the weed and scum he could reach from the surface, but after so many weeks since she was properly cleaned Barda had to be pretty foul deeper down.

I recall we had a fairly good start, but to be honest my mind hasn’t captured the blow by blow commentary. I do know that heading back inshore chasing Serefe (pictured) the compass showed we’d been hit by a header, which we tacked on, and we kept on being lifted. What had actually happened was the start of a bend which I failed to recognise. To complete the leg we eventually had to tack in to the bend, so we basically sailed a huge circle which put us miles out of touch. Combine my tactical failures with our lack of speed on all points and you’ll understand how badly we blew the result. Anyway we clambered over the finish line in sunshine and cracked a beer toasting a pleasant if frustratingly slow day out on the water.

Funniest moment had to be watching Flyover heading towards the harbour mouth after finishing, blissfully unaware of the ship parked in the fairway dropping off the pilot. There's an earlier picture than that on the right in the gallery showing the moment Flyover's headsail went aback as the helm realised there was something very big, very red and very steel right in his path.

SYC Autumn Series 2008, Race 3 Sunday 28 September

After such a lacklustre result the previous week I was keen to make amends so threw my scuba gear in the car on Saturday and went down to sort out Barda’s bum. Well that was the intention anyway, but when I got in the water and put my head under I had trouble breathing properly. It was obvious my health after the pneumonia isn’t quite up to the underwater thing yet, so with huge reluctance I clambered back aboard to towel off. I did however lay some spanners on the engine and after a bit of a tune up the smoking exhaust was largely cured (as was a bizarre growth in the back of the oven which may have evolved from a wayward Cornish Pastie).

The only other worry was a general lack of crew, with everybody apart from Jason away for what was forecast as the last sunny day of a pretty miserable summer. Sunday morning lived up to the Met Office promises with a very gentle northerly rolling over the sunny south downs to the sea. Jason and I decided that we didn’t need anybody else, and started getting the boat ready for some double-handed sailing. Interestingly whilst in the lock Jason suggested we try and get the number one headsail onto the redundant furling gear that I had never got round to removing, and blow me the sail fitted perfectly!

Out of the lock we got the main up without any drama and set off after the good sized fleet making for the starting line. Bob had left Serefe tied up for the day and was RO on the beach, setting us a great course that over 11 miles took in every fixed mark SYC has, bar one. Looking at the angle along the coast from the Old Fort start line to Beechams (mark number 2) we decided to break out the Code Zero, but by the time it was up and pulling we were at the back of the leading pack. Normally with this sail up in a light breeze we’ll drive through the fleet, but not today. NEVER underestimate the effect of a dirty bottom! It took us over a mile to catch the j24 Major Clanger and no matter what we tweaked, Barda felt horribly sticky. And so went the rest of the race.

Having only two headsail halyards (including the spinnaker halyard) we had to go bare headed for a moment changing the Code Zero to our big kite for the long haul out to mark number 3, sailing as high as the sail would let us, crabbing across the building tide. At the the mark we gave Moonlight Saunter (pictured), who had an inside overlap on us, enough room to round, though David did go wide and slow, presenting me with a big enough gap to flick through him to windward. We were now at the back of a long procession into mark number 1 which was compounded by the fickle breeze dropping back to around 6 knots.

The tide by now was streaming against us with speed falling all the time, nevertheless we held off Moonlight Saunter and got round just behind Chiron.

We were now running as deep downwind as we could towards mark 4, hunting out what little pressure was available to keep the kite flying. Being short-handed Jason rigged a temporary preventer on the boom to hold the main out as far as possible and then took the helm whilst I went down and made us a nice cup of tea. It was about now that the wind started going even further round and we pulled off a peachy gybe, keeping the kite filled all the way and not spilling a drop of the still hot tea.

Paul on Chiron was hobbled by a blown spinnaker block at his masthead and was limping along goose winged, and so proved easy fodder even for beardy Barda. It took forever to round the New Sewer (mark 4) and head into the Old Sewer (mark 6), carefully watching our track which was illustrating the strength of a 2 knot tide. In the distance we saw Neil and Anne-Marie Prescott dance Kingfisher round in front of Ella, they were having a great race, as were Yesitis (pictured above) who had established an early an unassailable lead on the first leg. Another surprise was Asterix (pictured below), who seemed to have finally found pace and had stomped off in to the distance, chased by the deceptively fast Flyover who have to be favourite for the series win.

Our spinnaker drop and rounding of the Old Sewer mark was uneventful, but when Jason decided to tweak the genoa halyard there was a twang from on high and the foot of the number one sagged. “Halyard” I shouted unnecessarily at Jason who was already running for the sharp end where he pinched the headsail track to stop the sail falling onto the deck, which is where he stayed for the last leg. Barda carried on with this maritime equivalent of a Norah Batty impression all the way along the beach to the old fort line, where John finished us in 5th place under IRC.

Somehow I just have to get Barda’s bottom clean before the next race....

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