Visa-gb trip: Round the Island race 2021 Wednesday June 30th to Sunday 4th July.
Sighted crew: Colin, David and Rick
VI crew: Alan, Anil, Eddy and John
This was the first yacht race entry for Visa-gb, joining some twelve hundred other boats. This
was the race’s 90th
anniversary and our Patron Pip Hare started the race. Picture below shows Pip Hare with the RTI crew ashore at Cowes:
The race itself took place on Saturday July 3rd. The competitors sailed anti-clockwise around
the Isle of Wight over a 50 nautical mile course, starting and ending at Cowes on the North side
of the island.
The crew assembled on charter Yacht Ellie B (a Beneteau Oceanis 37) at Haslar Marina,
Gosport on the Wednesday afternoon, stowing their gear before storing the food and drink for
the trip.
There was time for a short jaunt out that afternoon to try the boat before returning to the Marina
for an evening meal in Ellie B’s spacious and comfortable cabin.
Day 2 started in a relaxed fashion with crew freshening up at the Marina excellent toilets and
showers before a leisurely simple breakfast and the inevitable washing up.
The two days before the race were used to give the crew a chance to practice for the race, and
the visually impaired crew members took turns in steering and operating various winches as a
team whilst the Ellie B was tacked (turned whilst heading in to the wind) and gybed (turning the
boat when sailing with the wind).
Mastering these operations involves the coordination of the active crew to maintain boat speed
and stability, and a speedy execution of these operations is clearly essential in a race. The
visually impaired crew mastered these operations fairly quickly guided by the sighted crew
under the excellent leadership of Rick.
Lunch was spent in Osborne bay at anchor bobbing about in the sunshine, before more practice
on our way back to Haslar.
Essential boat repairs on the spinnaker halyard, which involved David having to be winched to
the top of the mast and the remaining crew keeping the boat balanced, delayed dinner and so
some emergency fish and chips were collected for a late dinner.
Russell and Dean from Strategic Solutions who provided part funding for the trip visited us on
Friday morning, to see the boat, meet the crew and chat with them, and most importantly, to
present the cheque. Dean was able to see firsthand what we do on our trips by accompanying
us on a short sail.
Friday saw more practice as we crossed to the Isle of Wight to see the positions of the start and
finishing lines. This included use of the Spinnaker sail, which is a cross between a parachute
and a kite, flown off the front of the boat and used to pull the yacht forward. A Spinnaker is used
for greater speed when the boat is travelling in the same general direction as the wind.
Spinnaker sailing requires a coordinated team to ‘trim’ this sail for best speed. In our case we
had one crew member standing in the rigging towards the front of the boat controlling one side
of the Spinnaker sail whilst another winched the other side from the cockpit below. A third crew
member worked to optimise the speed by keeping the Spinnaker full whilst attempting to
maintain the desired course.
On Friday evening Ellie B was tied to four other boats in the river at Cowes. This posed a challenge to getting all the crew to the pontoon to take the River Taxi across to the shore to meet Visa-gb Patron and solo round the world racer Pip Hare.
Colin stayed aboard to cook an authentic Indian meal, and so tormented the other yachts with the wonderful smell of spices.
The evening atmosphere was quite different up the river, and many boat parties were taking
place about us, though these seemed to subside early as sailors prepared for the early start.
Race day, Saturday was an early start, Skipper Rick had the whole boat up at 5am, hoping to
practice the race start procedure before our particular start time of seven thirty. The technique
here is to use the tidal water flow to gently push the boat, such that Ellie B would drift across the
start line on time or a few seconds later and so incur no race penalties for an accidental early
start. The boat engine cannot be used to control the boat motion at any point in the race,
including here at the start. Many boats drifted out early and their penalty was to sail 360
degrees round without impeding other competitors.
Breakfast, and all meals during race day were taken ‘on the go’, as all crew were involved in
either controlling the yacht or looking out for other boats in order to avoid collision or perhaps
gain race advantage. Picture below shows Anil at the helm with David and Rick alongside, Eddie, Alan and John are in the cockpit
The start was quite tense and the nine and a half hour duration of the race flew by.
David came into his element here as the race expert, strategically using knowledge of tides and
underwater geography, sailing priorities and experience of how the wind supply is corrupted by
nearby vessels, to advance our race position. Picture below shows the course Ellie B took around the Isle of Wight
The race path around the Island involves sailing from Cowes down to the notorious bottleneck
at the Needles on the west coast, then on round to St Catherine’s point on the South, then up to
Bembridge on the East and finally back round to Cowes on the North for the finish.
Sailing through these quadrants with their differing wind and tide conditions gave us the
opportunity to try a variety of sailing positions; from counterbalancing the boat with our
combined bodyweight under full sail, to being dragged at speed by the Spinnaker, to various
combinations of these. We had a few hair raising moments where other boats were competing
for the same space as us but nothing the crew could not handle,
After passing the finish line around 5pm with shouts of jubilation, and dropping off Isle of Wight
resident Eddy, we motored casually home to Haslar; finally arriving in the evening where the
day was rounded off with a very welcome hot shower, followed by pizza and a fair amount of
celebratory wine, supplied by Rick.
We finished a respectable 412th out the 960 boats that finished in a time of 9 hours and 22
minutes. We reached a top speed of 8.6 knots and experienced wind speeds up to 18 knots
during the race. In total 1169 entered.
This trip allowed all crew members who had not taken part in a race to learn not only how to sail
a boat in a normal sailing conditions but also to experience how to sail it in race conditions,
surrounded by many other boat and sailing for longer than our usual 4 or 5 hours sailing trips.
What did the crew say about the trip?
Alan: “I enjoyed all of the sailing tasks and my favourite sailing tasks were helming, tacking and
trimming the spinnaker. Another one of my enjoyment was sailing with other crew members and
being a part of a team and the socialising in the evenings after the sailing, whilst onboard the
boat.
Anil: “As ever, with Visa-gb trips, I learned a lot from the both the sighted and visually impaired
crew about how to work out wind and tide directions, weather helm and take remedial action,
how to operate a spinnaker and much more. The team work was terrific. The whole experience
was exhilarating.”
John: ‘I have lived within sight of the Isle of Wight all my life, and now I have raced all around it
in a day! This fantastic experience will be with me all my life, and I apologise in advance that I
will have to mention this fact each and every time someone mentions the IOW from now on’
