Isle of Sheppey Race 2008 - Report
For those of you not familiar with it, the Isle of Sheppey Round the Island Race is Europe's longest distance dinghy race at 40 miles, and this year was its 50th Anniversary. For me it was my second time round the Island. The following is not really a full race report - just my experience of a great day's sailing.
Saturday morning saw 6 Blazes on the line for the 10:30 medium handicap start, out of a total of 110 dinghy entries plus about a dozen sailboards. The course is straightforward; just keep the island on the right until you get back to where you started from. Added interest comes from the strong tides, a bridge you can't sail under, and this year a brisk NNE F4.
The start line had a significant port-end bias but sailing off both ends of the line before the start showed that a starboard-end start should pay as the incoming tide was much stronger at the port end. A quick tack inshore got me away near the front of the fleet with Mike Lyons (750), Pete Barlow (758) and an Albacore ahead of me. Paul Taylor (654), Bob Yates (717) and Bob Redman (new owner of 722) were in the chasing fleet. Heading east along the top of the island was going to be short tacking all the way, heading inshore as long as possible before the wind started easing, then tacking back out into the tide.
With a long race ahead, my plan was to pace myself rather than go all-out from the start. This was fine until, 10 minutes in, I got into the groove and started to catch the 3 boats ahead. At this point full-on racing ensued, hiking hard and not worrying that I probably had 4-5 hours more sailing ahead of me. Having reeled the Albacore in and swapped places with Pete a few times I was then up with Mike. More place swapping and hard hiking eventually saw Mike 100 metres ahead of me as we passed the headland near Warden after 90 minutes hard sailing. Coming just a few degrees off close hauled meant I could move back and get the bow out of the water for a fantastic planing blast across the bay at Leysdown. At this point our close racing and full-on planing had put a fair distance between us and the rest of the fleet.
After a fast reach to Shellness we rounded the point and were onto a run and relief for leg and arm muscles. 2 hours in now. The course round the south side of the island goes up the River Swale. Starting with just 20 metres between us, Mike went further south, while I stayed closer to the north shore, keeping in the channel to start with, then going for the shorter route across the shallows as we got to high tide. I thought to start with that my plan was working, but unsurprisingly, by the time I realised it wasn't, Mike had pulled out a 3 minute lead. Pete meanwhile was following my northerly course and catching up from behind. The first of the big cats started to fly past at this stage and also the leaders from the 11:00 fast handicap start.
One of the features of the IOS Race is the bridge at Kingsferry. It's too low to sail under so everyone has to go to the southern shore and walk their boat through on its side. It's a bit of a lottery how quickly you get through and this time it worked in my favour. Mike got held up behind a cat that was taking its time while I came straight-in and through. By now we were about 3 hours into the race and leaving the bridge Mike was about a minute ahead of me.
The course then follows the turns of the river as it heads back towards the River Medway at the Port of Sheerness. The wind was frustrating here with brief periods on the plane, then off. As the river came into the moorings at Queenborough we were back onto a beat and my legs started reminding me that they'd done a lot of hiking already. But Mike was just ahead so I wasn't going to relax now. Resorting to shouting at myself to work harder did the trick and I started closing the gap. Coming into Sheerness docks we had flat water and a still a good F4. At this point it was down to who could hike harder for longer and I was sailing higher and faster than Mike. Just as I caught him up it became clear that I was too close in to the big dock buildings and a momentary lull had me scrambling for the centre of the boat as it all came over on top of me. Fortunately I managed to keep it upright - then had to go about catching Mike again.
Up ahead was Garrison Point and it didn't look good. Wind against tide was producing big breaking waves and that's where we were headed. At this point I wasn't sure how far out we had to go before we could tack and head back east towards the sailing club. So I waited for other boats to start tacking then looked for any piece of flattish water I could find. I was ahead of Mike with only a mile or so left to go - and I wasn't about to bin it in a tack now! One cautious tack later and it was straight into the big waves; one moment with nothing under the bow, the next with the whole of the foredeck under water. Eventually the finish line back at the sailing club came into sight and I crossed the line; First medium handicap boat in a time of 4 hours and 6 minutes and 19th overall on handicap.
Mike was a minute back at 4:07 (20), Pete at 4:09 (23), Paul 4:21 (30), Bob Y 4:33 (50) and Bob R 4:56 (75)
With the wind direction we had, it was a day for the cats and fast handicap leaders. Overall winner was a Tornado in a new course record of 2 hours 10 minutes, 1st monohull was an International Canoe in 3 hours 15. Full results can be seen on the IoS Sailing Club website.
Results aside, the IOS race is a fantastic day's sailing. If you haven't tried it already, you must.
David Angwin
Blaze 710