Barda sails in the 33rd annual Royal Escape Race
The Royal Escape, organised by the Sussex Yacht Club, is the largest cross channel race outside of the solent and attracted a healthy entry of 64 yachts comprising both PY and IRC fleets to the start line between Brighton's piers on Friday 22 May.

With press and radio coverage and a glorious sunny morning, the race had set drive-time Brighton buzzing. Barda is actually well connected with the race as Steve, owner and skipper is actually Chair of th Race Committee so spent most of the time leading up to the race organising the activities rather than getting Barda ready to fight under IRC as a class two boat. Nevertheless we did make it to the start area with Steve and Rob Vyse aboard along with Nigel, 'Big' Rob, Maggie, Jason and Daff - listed in no particular order!

Equipe Barda goes to Fécamp

We had a superb day for it on Friday with all the fleets comprising 64 boats getting away cleanly across the two starts set close to the pier off of Brighton. PY went first and Barda went with the IRC fleets some 20 minutes later and with the amazing visibility you could see everyone around for much of the way.

Team Barda had enjoyed a bacon sandwich on the sail down from Shoreham to Brighton, and after being prised from his slumbers at 04:30am, it was no surprise that Rob retired to his bunk shortly after breakfast and proceeded to sleep soundly for the next six hours. Barda was rather aggressive on the start line and I later had Robin Stevenson from Joe 90 comment that we were amongst the few up at the comedy boat end and that we'd kept them out of the prime spot, which was nice.

From the start line we raced west toward a bouy laid off of Hove and from there the fleet turned south for France. On the beat we were tacking quite short and had a close shave as we were on port when the French J92s 'Jam' of Alain Lepreux hailed starboard - team Barda pulled of a superb crash tack we pressed on to round the turning mark in agood position with fairly clear air, sailing initially with just the No.2 Genoa and then trying our reaching kite, but it was soon apparent that it was time for the 'Green Meanie' to come out of its bag.

When I approaching Quantum for the sails in 2008 we had a lime green Code Zero made, which is a sort of cross between a flat spinnaker and a large headsail - it basically only works in a tiny wind range up to around 20 knots of breeze at 40-50 degrees of apparent wind. Outside of this range it is useless, but inside it's like having nitrous injection. That sail has sat almost unused waiting for the right race, and on Friday morning we had perfect Code Zero conditions. With the SW force 3-4 from the outset we were able to carry this powerful cloth much higher than a reaching kite. Consequently we were able to sail high to the west and keep the speed, and sail through much of the IRC one fleet. Passing recent and raced-up boats with a bargain basement 1982 vintage Beneteau is a pleasure to be savoured! It was around now that 'Little' Rob was coaxed out of his bunk with a Cornish Pastie.

We were making a steady 9-10 knots past the Greenwich light vessel which marks the middle of the shipping lanes and kept this sort of pace up until around 3pm when the pressure eased and we dropped back to 8 knots. At this point we made a decision to stick with our 'west is best' plan, assuming the breeze would go even lighter as we approached the French coast.

There wasn't a huge amount of chatter on the VHF but we did hear Steve Thomas aboard Truant report to Derek on BoJangles that he was taking water and the cabin sole was flooded to above his boots. Truant's bilge pumps were coping OK and he pressed on - it later turned out that there was a siphon problem with the shower/sink which was an easy fix.

Still flying the Code Zero we went higher and higher, trying to bank as much west against the flooding tide. We'd been pushing up against Red Machine, but they couldn't go any higher with their kite so I just dipped them and went further west... Red Machine went for speed and dropped down to the east and virtually out of sight.

The only other boat out to the west we could see was Devils Advocate carrying hordes of Rami - assuming the 'Squire' was being a slippery coot going west I was very surprised when they popped their huge lightweight spinnaker and headed east as well. That left just Barda out to the west. We were on our own.

Eventually with around 5 miles to run, the wind really coughed and we were down to perhaps 2 knots of boat speed, with what wind we could sniff being banged out of the sails as the boat was bounced around in a nasty short chop. This was the low point, now carrying our big running kite as the wind unexpectedly shifted round to the south east - we were now struggling on the port gybe to hold ourselves against the tide, however looking out to our port side we could see everybody else being dragged east by the tide to park along the cliffs. Our spirits may have been low but we were a lot happier than those going backwards towards St.Valery.

Eventually after a nice cup of tea and working every puff of air we were given, Team Barda crabbed to within 2 miles of Fécamp with the boat pointing at Etretat all the way... that's Rob in the picture trying to spot incoming puffs of wind. Then with the tide easing a little from its full 2 knot flow and with another 5 knots of wind speed we were able to harden up on the new pressure and sail into Fécamp bay and across the line in fine style.

Barda get the class win!

Having been parked up for so long fighting the tide I didn't have any great hopes of a placing so when we tied up and Karen and the assorted half-cut shore crew ran down to meet us I was stunned to learn we had got line honours in IRC 2 with and elapsed time of 12:28:41, and later it was confirmed we'd won the class by a 32 minute margin - we were only the 6th boat home that had sailed all the way.

Needless to say the first stop for 'Equipe Barda' was the bar at the hosting yacht club SRF and it was a very merry crew that finally retired for the night.

Our first ever placing in the Royal Escape and we get the class win. Fantastic. It was just a shame that I spent the weekend running around organising and doing speeches as it only really sank in on the very pleasant sail home on Sunday.

For the full Royal Escape Results click here >>

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