Tobermory Race 1995 - Shipmate's Log

I touched yesterday on the Tobermory Race, which is a little under threat for 2014 there being a shift in West Highland Week to mid July. However I must recommend this race to anyone who gets the chance to enter their boat, or join as crew. In terms of it being one of those "sheltered off-shore" events  -  ie inshore in the sounds and lochs of Argyll -  then it stands as one of the longest distance races over two days still running in Scottish waters.

Here is a wonderful BBC film from the late sixties I guess, there is no "MCMXX" at the end, but judging by the lack of GRP boats and the cars and clothes it must be placed around then. Magnus Magnusson narrates and is on board "Lola" a ketch, while cameramen are also on an 8m racer, and Ian Nicholson's St Mary- he later went on to own St Joan, as Sigma 33 we raced against week in week out through the summers of the mid nineteen nineties. You get the real feel for the race in this film, and it is the self same course today with of course the same tide.

For those of you who aren't in the know the Tobermory Race has been used in my lifetime  as a "feeder" to deliver yachts up to the later big event, West Highland Week. However  it predates west highland week going back to the great days of Fife and 8m sailing on the clyde and the west coast, and in a way it is actually the predecessor of WHW because many used the passages to deliver boats to the west for a cruising holiday (Clyde Cruising Club being the race-organiser of course! ). I guess people decided that racing was a good way of having company and WHW was born in the early 70s.

 The Tob' race for me had some nostalgia as being in the family patter and sailing journals which we had dating back to the late 40s. That and the Tomatin race were magical long distance oddesseys I used to wonder about as a nipper, and I had a kind of inspiration and awe about the whole distance racing thing instilt in me.

1995 Seems like just a stroll back down a very short memory lane, but it is almost twenty years ago my god! I started racing boats 20 years ago give or take a couple of tours in Contessas! It was really this race itself that made me feel connected to a real sense of tradition, and this was because it is a band of very select sailors who choose to do it: gentlemen skippers then exclusively.

The race started early doors on a Friday in mid july, with the tail end of a front giving enough wind for good progress, and only the chance of a shower. We started off Port Banatyne- I seem to not remember if we had a super early start or had overnighted. It brought back memories of my 1980 one and only venture with my father's jaguar 27 when we covered the same route and got our anchor fouled on the old battleship mooring off the west bay there!

We chundered off down the kyles and I believe we struck out on a tight reach,  to then have the wind bend enough for spinnaker reaching to the kyle's isthmus, the burnt islands. There the wind also bent more than the 90' or so change in course to exit the east kyle. We dropped pretty much on time, and set off on a beat up the west Kyle, I reckon we had to do a fair bit of tacking.

I really don't remember much of the day past that to be honest. It was the very first time I sailed on the boat and I remember the poor helmsman's terrible stammer as he greeted me, something he has worked on since of course. It was a very leisurely day, with some new sailors and we capped it off with a posh gentleman's dinner at the old lock keepers house come restuarant.

Between Loch Fyne and the Atlantic lies a couple of obstacles, firsly a bit of the hard stuff AKA Kintyre. This is cut across at Adrishaig and over to Crinan, and the whole thing is 9 miles of welcome 4 knt passag. Really a whole day has to be allowed, by design and to be de rigeurr, for this passage really and it is worth the trip, with lunch at the pub on the top section mandatory, as is a good pint in the wee bar at the Crinan Hotel. Take a folding bike like a Zike on board to stretch your legs and return to Ardrishaig for that forgotten loaf, kellogs mixed mini cerials or that scourge of the pre-fancy boat sailors, UHT milk for the bilge pantry. Many of the locks are still manual and also there is a pretty good pub lunch to be had at the summit of Cairnbaan, just beside the swinging road bridge. The canal is both quaint and highly functional, while being great fun even in the rain, but most of all extremely relaxing compared to the passage races aboard a one design racer with ambitions!  As you descend the locks towards crinan the great vista over Dalreada and the hills of Mull open before you and this view never fails to inspire wonder and awe in me to this day.

Safely in the great pool of Crinan canal harbour, the next obstacle is predictably wet and unpredicatbly hard: the route out to the islands is strewn with islets and rocks and has the fiercest tide in the UK, running at at least 7 knots like a great river alternating North on the flood and South on the Ebb. To meet the north bound flood, we had to be in the mustering area at the unbelievable wee small hour of 4 am due to the tide in the Doris Mor and the need to get north of Scarba and pladda before the turn of the tide.  We milled around in the early daylight of a july morn, damp and cool as Scottish western mornings can be.

Crinan harbour's 'in-sailing is not actually the best place for starts due to there being a few just shallow enough banks and some difficult to spot rocks. However it has always been the start of leg two of this race, and for twenty years or so it was also the start for WHW which at its peak had over 180 boats to spew out into the firth of Lorne from Crinan.

The riddled tide as you reach the big gate to the sound of  The wind picked up to a top of three - four and a bit, eventually gusting five just as we went out the Mor. We had spinnaker on a tight reach and we were doing probably 7 knts boat speed but only just stemming the tide in a  back eddy there. I had an elbow round the shrouds as I fought with the spinnaker, shouting back for a job hoist to reduce the load and allow for dumps without broaching. I remember feeling that my baptism of fire on a FC Europe now was to good means in the venerable Sigma 33.  I think we dropped only to hoist again and make progress up the sound of Luing towards the Firth of Lorne's great mouth north of the island, bounded by Mull's desolate south shore on the other side.

What I remember much of the passage north of Scarba and Lunga, but it took its time and then we were dumped out in the firth of lorne luckily on the slack tide so at least we held position. I remember Scott Chalmers FC 10m piroeting around it's narrow keel as the last of the old or the first eddies of the new, ebb tide tickled her. At these occaisions now I much prefer to put the kettle on and manovre somewhere we can anchor ( kedging in racing terminology).

As predicted a change in the tide seemed to help matters and the wind started to fill in from the west so we were off again, and the FC Europe I used to sail on ploughed on past us IIRC, with what was then considered a big spinnaker! Now a puny little fractional kite.  Into the Sound of Mull then having been lucky with the tide, but having been out now 12 hours, the wind freshened and started to veer making for more tight reaching when we needed it probably least! Tired and wind burnt in the brisk afternoon, we crossed the line in full speed for a Sigma without swell, and then had a real challenge in getting the spinnie down.

Relieved and somewhat excilerated, we no doubt headed for the Mishnish: to be honest I can't remember. No doubt there was some McEwans export on board as the owner worked for S&N, and I dare say some were cracked and gannetted down after the boat was packed away.

I felt like I had graduated in that race, but in fact I was just leaving primary school in sailing!

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The delivery back was a calm affair, with Old Hodges on board from Oban I believe as Pilot for the infamous Cuan Sound, a "short cut" which allows you most often to cheat the tide at the Doris Mor and sneak around in land towards ardfern and then onwards to Crinan. It was a murky day with the low dank clouds of a deep warm front all around us. We managed a fair old lick through the Cuan sound, I reckon 9 knots at least over the ground and it is no easy task, there being a long bank in the middle of the sound and then some large rock shelves to the south. I later helmed a boat through there under spinnaker while racing, the owner too paranoid to do so himself, relying only on his own chart work to get us through.

South we went by car somehow, tired I dont recall any more than the Cuan sound and coming in knackered to crinan sea lock with some cheeky english prat calling for the bow line too early. 

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Tobermory Race under my belt, I had passed a very big test of manhood though, and finally followed the wake of my Father who only tacitally agreed  to take me to Crinan in 1980 on his usual odyssey to the inner Hebrides and then had the impertinence to die that october (without any life insurance). A passage race and a passage of rights then for me personnally and one I hope to take again one day with my own children.