Kenmore completes leg 3 of Shetland Round Britain & Ireland
by Nick Bubb 1 Jul 2006 07:56 BST
Leg 3 report, take 1
Pete and I set off at around 0200 on the 19th June. CFS had been first away earlier in the day, Alacrity nine minutes after us, hot on her heels as we blast reached south around the bottom of Barra before heading North West toward St Kilda (the most westerly of the Outer Hebrides). Steady 20 knots from just west of north. After a few sail changes we settled with one reef in the main and one reef in the jib and proceeded to give Alacrity a good pasting after they had earlier been looking good on us. We disappeared over the horizon and didn’t tack until we reached the lay line to round St Kilda. This put us about 30 miles to the SW of the rock and around 70 miles from Barra.
As we came out of the tack and settled, slowly winding the sails in and powering up there was a big bang and instantly the rig, sails and rigging were in the sea. As ever in this situation there was no time to think about what had caused it or what if etc we just had to recover it and ensure there was only minimal damage to the boat. Even though the sea state was moderate the rig was still banging around all over the place and it was full hour by the time everything was safely aboard. It took another hour or so until our jury rig was up and we could make any headway.
To build the jury rig we put the boom up vertically in the daggerboard case, used the spinnaker sheets as shrouds and then used our Aggmore Property branded jib on it’s side and the storm sails to go for a kind of ‘poled out headsail’ set up. Fortunately it was downwind back to Barra, which after some thought seemed to be the most sensible and nearest place to go. We would work things out from there!
Funnily enough at the point we lost the rig we were pretty much as far offshore as we are likely to be at any point during the whole race! I was determined not to call the lifeboat as I felt that our situation wasn’t life threatening and there could be people in more danger than us. As we got back to the edge of the islands, our friendly B and B owner who we had been staying with arranged for a RIB to come and tow us the last few miles. It was just over 24 hours after leaving Castlebay on Barra that we returned, our world a very different place!
Fixing the mast, “It was a game of two halves...”
We awoke to a barrage of supportive messages from friends all offering whatever help they could, which in most cases wasn’t much seeing as we were practically at the other end of the world, or so it seemed. The big low that was out in the Atlantic when we had left was starting to move in and the breeze was picking up. There was little we could do immediately as it was blowing 40 knots in the bay and we had no plan yet. It seemed obvious that we may as well fix the rig in Barra properly if at all possible, as it would need doing at some point and even if we retired we would still have to sail nearly 600 miles back to Plymouth. At 28 foot wide here is no chance of packing this boat up onto a trailer!!
Trying to find somewhere to do the work was the first job. Once again the legendary Ronnie from our B and B came to the rescue and managed to get us some space in the local council depot warehouse. It seemed ideal: big, waterproof and with lots of heavy machinery and rubbish bins. We had few options and this was the stand out winner!
Next up we had to recover everything off the boat, it was still blowing a gale outside but we went for it anyway. Pete and I got the sails off the boat and discovered that luckily only the mainsail was damaged and that was minor. We totally stripped the rig back to the bare tubes and then tied fenders to it and floated it back in alongside a RIB with help from Paul Larsen. Incidentally Pete and Paul on Cornwall PFS had finished fixing up the structural damage on their boat and were now waiting for the weather to improve.
As we got a shore Ronnie was at hand again, this time with a Transit van to put all the rigging in and mast sections on top. We caused quite a traffic jam on the way up to the depot but everyone was interested and had advice to offer!
In the meantime I had also been arranging for Alex Hewitt from Ocean Endeavours to come up with all the materials and tools that we would need to fix the tube. The basic plan was to make an internal sleeve for the rig, by laying up some off axis (45s) carbon fibre around a good part of the tube with release film on it and then crack this off and trim it to fit inside the tube. We would also need to make a closing plate and a new tube for the luff groove. Once this was then all done, we would then vacuum the equivalent to the original mast laminate plus 25% to the sleeve and taper this off up and down the rig with an overlap of something like 600 mm each end for the longest layer. Sounds simple in theory! Aside from this we had to reinforce all the shroud terminals and to repair the spreader and the tube around the spreader. By the time Alex had arranged things back home and got himself and all the materials to Barra it was Friday 23rd in the evening and I had a target to leave on the 27th . This was to give KENMORE a chance of crossing the finishing line in Plymouth by 1200 on 9 th July, which is the time the finish line officially closes. Although it would be great to make this, I feel the major sense of achievement will be making it round in one piece!!
Anyway after Alex had arrived, the two of us worked night and day to get the work done and come the morning of the 26th we had pretty much finished. Incredible even if I do say so myself! The owner Dave Barden who is also a rigger had arrived by now and he set about preparing the rig and together we formed a plan to lower the rig onto the boat off the ferry terminal at low tide. As usual there were several doubters of another crazy plan but it worked, although not with much time to spare before the ferry turned up! We finished tuning the rig and the various small repairs to the boat and were ready to leave late on the 26th, ahead of the revised schedule…just.
Thank you to all the local community of Barra and especially to Ronnie MacNeil and his wife Anne, without whom I seriously doubt we’d be back in this race at all. Once again I must thank our sponsors KENMORE who have been amazingly supportive for this whole project and indeed as soon as soon as the rig came down they were one of the first people to leave a message offering support. Thanks John and Bill.
Leg 3 report, take 2
Due to the obvious delays and resulting over run of the race Pete Cumming made the difficult decision that he would have to return home and drop out of the race due to other upcoming work commitments. Pete has been a great co-skipper bringing many skills to the project and putting in an enormous number of hours preparing the boat. Fortunately Alex Haworth, who qualified for the race by virtue of the fact he had sailed many miles on the boat with the former owner, was able to drop everything and come and join me for the last three legs.
During the last few days of repairs, we were constantly checking the weather forecast with Clemency Williams from Winning wind.com. At times it really seemed that the gods really were against us with another depression building out in the middle of the Atlantic and rolling our way. As it happened we would get part of this but never more than 25 knots, still enough to make me very nervous with the repaired rig but not enough to delay our restart further. KENMORE crossed the start line of Castlebay for the second time at 2350 on 26 th June. Unfortunately in terms of the race our start time of 1 week ago is the one that counts!!
It was very light and fickle on the way out to St Kilda, which we eventually rounded successfully this time in the early morning. We then had a building breeze from the south west backing round to the south east which gave us a very fast run all the way to the legendary Muckle Flugga, the northern most point of the Shetlands at well over 60 degrees north. We got there at 2300 in what seemed like broad daylight, it has been one of the most interesting parts of the this race how much daylight we have had due to going so far north at this time of the year. It really makes the sailing all the more enjoyable. Having said that we then got a full blast of 25knots from the south for the remaining 60 miles south to Lerwick and the finish line, not too pleasant and certainly an extremely tense time onboard, trying to nurse the rig but also to test it. I was extremely conscious if something went wrong here we could end up on our way to Iceland!!
Thankfully the rig came through this test and we slipped into Lerwick with the breeze dropping at 0911 on the 29th June. Amazingly after a week out of the race, we arrived only a few hours after the last boat left, putting us at the back of the fleet by 52 hours but still in with a chance of catching them!
The rig came through the test well, we have some modifications to do but essentially it looks ok, fingers crossed! There was a lot of halyard chafe due to the fact there was little time to make smooth new halyard exits and there are carbon splinters everywhere making rope handling extremely painful.
With southerly winds forecast for the next few days it is unlikely to be a quick or pleasant trip to Lowestoft but I’m hugely excited about having the opportunity to sail back to the east coast and meet up with so many old friends. We leave Lerwick on Saturday 1st July at 0911 and hope to get into Lowestoft late on Tuesday or very early Wednesday.
Many thanks to all our sponsors: The Kenmore Property Group, Kenmore Homes, Aggmore Commercial Property, Flexistore, Gill, Element Eyewear, Plastimo, Seamark Nunn, Tacktick, Quantum Sails, Ocean Yacht Systems, Burgess Salmon, Green Design and Harken.