Royal Escape Race - 2 May 2008
Astonishingly all six of us made it aboard Barda by 0530 on Friday morning in time to slip through the 0600 lock out of Shoreham, heading East from the port towards the Royal Escape Race start off Brighton. Jason is a Royal Escape veteran and given half a chance will bore the pants off you about how many time she’s done this race, whilst Nigel, Pete and myself have only a handful of finishes in our logs and Rob and Adam are newbies.

Leaving the main on the boom, Jason was sent down to the stove and by the time we reached the registration gate off Brighton Pier we were munching on bacon rolls (as you can see from the image Jason is a connoisseur when it comes to Pot Noodles of which he eats around 15 on each channel crossing). At 0800 the PY fleet got away cleanly and the IRC boats were starting to congregate along the pretty square line. Curling down the line on port with a minute to go we tacked round in to a gap about a third of the way down the line and managed to complete our turn before fouling the pack charging in from astern...phew. With speed building we headed up to cross the line pretty much on the gun and just managed to squeeze past the bows of Fisheries Protection Vessel Watchful, the committee boat and Pete’s old place of work.

Tacking onto port when we had a gap we headed for the turning mark off of Hove and got round well head of a lot of boats - I wasn’t really counting but things were certainly looking good. The next mark on the course was the Greenwich light vessel which we had to leave to port and we were lucky enough to hold enough speed and height to just make this target without having to tack. The breeze was still holding for us and we were matching Red Machine and Selene to windward for boat speed. The chartered late entry Leopard was also just above us (see picture above) and we were a bit disappointed when they finally got into groove and showed us their heels around mid channel.

The shipping lanes didn’t give us too much trouble with and unlike others we didn’t have to alter course at all to avoid the commercial traffic. At this point we were all in a very buoyant mood and with the leading boats still in sight after some 30 miles of racing I was just starting to think about a placing.Then the wind coughed, spluttered and died. Swinging round to the east we stayed on starboard, holding our way with the apparent breeze, but once we tacked the zephyr left us drifting. An hour or so later as we bobbed along with perhaps a knot of boatspeed we could see the pack led by Truant and Sleeper plus Joe 90 powered up and vanishing over the horizon in the new Easterly breeze. We waited, and waited and still there was no substance in the sails until much later Barda finally came alive and started to accelerate towards France. I know it’s always easy to blame the wind but we really did seem to have been dealt a poor hand.

Changing from #1 to #0, back to #1, then #0 and as the breeze finally made it’s mind up we peeled to our light running kite and pushed south. A final shift saw us change again to the Code Zero and it was this frighteningly fluorescent yellow sail that carried us right into the French coast. With darkness falling we watched the eastward Selene coast to a virtual stop as she entered the dead zone under the coastal cliffs. Creeping west into the bay we tried to avoid this huge wind shadow from the land, but Mark at Selene’s helm proved a slippery foe as he managed to wiggle his way along the coast and across the line in front of us.

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Rob Vyse was our one-man fan club at the pier head shouting and hollering as we entered Fécamp in the dark and found ourselves a spot in the marina (he'd come over to France on the ferry with Karen). Minutes later with our declaration in the office we toasted a great crossing with a cold beer in the SRF club house and I started work in my capacity as Royal Escape Race Chairman - I won’t bore with the details but suffice it to say that I had a pretty busy couple of days organising things.

The plan was to head for home on Sunday after the wine and cheese party so around 1430 French time we let go the mooring lines and turned for home. Sadly we left an old friend behind, as Charlie, an opportunistic swine from Highland Daughter had swiped Colin the Cod. Bereft of Barda’s mascot we set sail in a sombre mood, loosely paired with Truant a few miles ahead. Apart from a quiet hour or so some 20 miles off the French coast, the North Easterly wind held fair all the way home and with the donkey helping in the lulls we had a cracking run home, getting across the shipping lanes before darkness and making the 2300 (BST) lock in to Shoreham (see picture above), still in company with Steve Thomas helming Truant. Our top speed on the way home, with full main and the #2 was a lively 10.4 knots which made all of us smile.

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