Fastnet from A Far.....'

Four days in and this Year's Fastnet rolls up for a close, in the year the wind gods seem to have had better places to blow their eager breath upon. Blur was the boat I was following. It seems very much that the Johnson brothers have actually 'gotten the j111 just 'bout right'in terms of being that rare combination of a sub 40 foot performance yacht which can impress once the devious deeds of corrected IRC time are done. The boat is perhaps going to carry the mantle the venerable j35 did in the CHS days through to the late nineties, where the j105 never set the heather on fire, being suprisingly pretty penalised on IRC and here in the EU disney parts, never setting the  heather on fire in CHS/IRC.

I dare say that until the drizzle came on in the earlier hours of today that the whole thing was both a grand bit of sailing while occaisionally a totally tantrum inducing series of light wind and heavy tide frustrations under way.

I would hardly call the boats currently forming a bee-line to plymouth from the Scily Isles straggelers. Amidst their ranks is of course the rather famous Grif Rhys Jones sailing on his wooden yawl, Argyll. He is in good company for there is a plethora of 38 to 40 foot plastic boats all around him, who are probably cursing their polyester white tubs for having taking them so long to complete the course in so little style. Sigma 38s , 'beachball Bene' 40,7s . Dehlers etc.. There is Grif on the helm of his wooden yawl, mizzen mast just right where he wants it,  you ain't ketching him out on that one!

One mini fleet in IRC 4  was at one time a one design fleet sailing in the infamous 79 race. Now there were only three entries for the time served grand old lady of the 1970s peak of cruiser-racing, the once ubiquitous sigma 33. They are covering themselves in a good deal of glory, being the shortest yachts I have yet seen on the entry list, yet being in around their bigger, tubbier sister, the Sigma 38s and a fair few newer and vastly more expensive laminated bath tubs in the same range as those surrounding our not/the/nine/o'clock/news anchor man.

Is this a race for me to run up the flag pole and stalk a crew position on?  Well it is now on my list at least of might like to do's, fortuity and opportunity mostly gone with a non sailing family, and geography now conspiring to make N.Sea races and a third Faerder race most practical.  But back up, it is no Sydney Hobart of personal logistics, and experience off shore crew with maturity and motivation are a bit thin on the ground. Maybe next year....