Round Britain & Ireland in a Trimaran

Mike Fennell – (dad) who was our weatherman all the way round (whilst in mobile contact anyway) – on hand 24 hours a day, he did a grand job! It was only when I strayed from his path that it went tits up (no change there then eh dad?)

Kim and Martin from the Tollesbury Sailing club, both came down to help prepare the boat for the off on the final leg at Lowestoft, helping to do all sorts (eg unwanted water ballast removal aka pumping out the floats, and various parts of the main hull)

Kim again for help and advice by mobile on progress/routing/weather etcand for offering to drive to the Outer Hebrides to bring the fuel pump (he would have done it too!)

Christine Fennell – my missus -without her permission none of this would’ve occurred….special thanks for my Father’s Day box which turned up in the Shetlands complete with white choc chip cookies, photographs of the kids and some of their artwork! No seriously you are a star for putting up with this madness!

Rob Tocknell of Terence Higgins Trust for being our No.2 fan – Rob came to the start and the finish to spur us on – he now has the title of Only Man Overboard Strontium Dog having fallen in the water trying to transfer from dinghy to ship after a few ales in Plymouth – well done Rob!

And finally, the biggest thank you of all goes to my Co-skip Simon Redding who not only rebuilt the boat but got her ready for the off. During the race he was the one who went up the mast 10 times, he was the one who went up the foredeck mostly and he was the one who spent what seemed like days struggling with that bleedin’ diesel engine.

Simon, you are a giant of a man, there is nothing you can’t fix including my own propensity for lapsing into a morose mood: in your immortal words which are still ringing in my head ” Fennell, get that ****ing black cloud off the top of your head”.

Simon, may your glass forever remain half-full.

And finally to all our other friends family and supporters for your goodwill wishes and of course -on behalf of our charities- to all those who have made donations for THT and Sail4Cancer, I thank you.

Thanks for all the congrats – we didn’t exactly cover ourselves in glory but for a first offshore race it was a large one to chew on.

We lost out in the Atlantic because we had a few issues on board and spent all our time fighting them when we should have been concentrating on sailing upwind in 30knots of breeze and a nasty chop. Consequently from being in the front few boats rounding the Scillies we came in 19th to Barra. Bummer. We never really caught up those 14 hours.

Leaving Barra we had a blinding run to Lerwick with sustained spinnaker runs in the high teens (see video link in last post)  At Lerwick we had fixed everthing except the engine (read ‘generator’) but a new fuel pump had her running again just before we left. Leaving Lerwick in a F8-9 we ended up running south with just the jib out and speeds of upto 22 knots – exhilerating! We got within 90 miles of Paradox who had to slow down in the 6-8m swell (towing tyres and stuff). Orginally they had a 200 mile lead over us…. as the wind  abated to almost nothing (around the Hull area) we slowed again and lost out, slipping into Lowestoft a respectable 13th – 5 or 6 hours ahead of 40′ Dazcat ‘Suenos’ who had beat us into Lerwick by 20 mins. A good run again.

Lowestoft – Plymouth was a mix. Once again we shot off and despite tacking through the night across the estuary and round the corner to Dungeonness we gained time on the leading 10 boats again – getting within 10-20 miles of them with 150 miles to go. Alas they slipped through the light weather window and the door was then firmly shut in our face. Kedged off Brighton we sat back and watched DVD’s until the tide changed. A 5 knot wind accompanied it but by 5am the tide had changed and the wind had gone again. Kedged again off Bembridge we caught 2 dozen mackerel and actually delivered some by dinghy to ‘DingDong’ who were kedged 1/4 mile away….they were grateful as they had run out of food by this time. We kedged twice more crossing Lyme Bay and lost 15 hours in all. At one stage we kedged in 55m against a 3 knot tide off Portland Bill.  We tied everything together and by the end the whole boat was vibrating as the tide played a tune across the 70m long bar tight double bass ’string’.

The pack was then hard on our heels as the wind filled in from – you guessed it- the East! When the wind came again we went too far south looking for it and losing our hard earned 12th place to DingDong and sailing in over the top of DazCat Suenos pipping them to the finish line by the skin of our teeth (4 miles behind with 19 miles to go….) didn’t help our corrected position of course but at least it made us feel better.

The smaller faster multis (Paradox and Freebird) were very well sailed and did as well as they could but  the big stuff just knocked them for six and they couldn’t keep up any sustained high speeds at those times. On Paradox they left the companionway hatch open so that they could dive in if she went to flip over – consequently they had to bail out the main hull with buckets (water upto their knees) every time a wave broke over them. They steered with the ‘bar’ from the main hull facing backwards concentrating only on keep the aft end square onto the waves. I take my hat off to these brave guys (Matt and Will) who up until Lerwick were holding the course record – balls of titanium if you ask me. You should have seen them in the stopovers – hands and heads swollen through prolonged over-use of drysuits (they never took them off).

Meanwhile on SD we complained when we didn’t have enough power for the autopilot and kept our freshly caught mackerel in the fridge…..

I know there is much consternation among my multihull friends that this year the RBI was lost to monohulls but bear in mind that the same boats came in 2nd 4th and 5th last time and it took a 50 foot cruiser-racer  trimaran (Alacrity is 50×36 to SDs 43×33 but weighs the same…) to beat them.

Other acknowledgements
Simon ‘Biffa’ Baker and Dan Felllows on Drama Queen and Mike and Grant on Firebird – these guys sailed a brilliant race keeping up
with the front runners all the way round, they should be recognised for their frankly professional standards of seamanship. Superb.
Tony Van Hee and Bob Beggs on the smallest multihull in the race ‘Allez Van Hee’ – again these guys sailed an astonishing race punching well above their weight
(I know Tony won’t mind me saying that he is about 68 and the boat has to be one of the wettest in the race bar Paradox – but being a Geordie he is built differently
to us southern-softies!
Darren Newton and Rupert on Suenos – Suenos is a big catamaran cruiser (she even has a flat screen tv that slides up from behind the nav station). We battled with
Suenos all the way round despite being lighter and having quite a bit more sail area – simply because she was sailed so well by these guys. In the end we beat her
in by only an hour or two over the water (she caned us on corrected time).
Tim and Richard on the Dragonfly 35 who despite repeated problems made it round finishing only a few hours after ourselves.
John and Andrew on Class 40 ‘Spliff’ who were our constant companions in the bars and pubs on the stopovers – brilliant guys!

A big thank you
Finally myself and Simon would like to say a big thank you to the Spence Family in Lerwick who took us in, fed us, washed our smellies, fed us again, ferried us
around Lerwick to find stuff to fix things! Willem Spence even came out drinking with us 2 nights in a row – a brave man indeed! I sincerely hope we meet again.

See

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/amfitrite/VideoOfSpinnyRunToMuckleFlugga#5489328117740191650

http://andrew-fennell.co.uk/wp-admin/post-new.php?unfoldmenu=1

Your hero, hard at it on the toughbook doing a bit of nav…..needless to say Mr Redding did all the hard work!

It took me a good 15 minutes to upload this photograph for you so to speed things up I have uploaded some of the better ones to my Picasa site – if interested please visit

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/amfitrite/RBIPhotos#

I will now go back to Picasa and see about uploading some video as well.

This blogging thing takes forever!

Needless to say Simon, the Dog and I are back safe and sound. We ‘landed’ at 4am Monday and are now slowly adjusting to the fact that work starts Monday!!

I write this from the comfort of the saloon onboard SD in (very) sunny Lowestoft!

A lot of water has passed under the beams of SD since I last put finger to keyboard and once again I am hard pressed to squeeze an hour of blogging with our re-start for the last leg in an hour or so…this race is so punishing to boat and crew that every stopover involves rest/fixing stuff/ (and a little pub RnR in the evenings of course ) time just flies.

As I am running out of time I will just give you a few highlights – I tried to upload photos but this mobile link is too slow so I will upload all the photos in Plymouth shortly after we arrive – promise!

A few facts and figures 

450 miles from Barra (outer hebrides) to Lerwick in the Shetlands.

480 miles from Lerwick to Lowestoft.

Max speed 22 knots

Min speed 0.0 knots!

Max wind speed 40 knots (leaving Shetland)

24 pot noodles

20 odd cans of coke

24 hours spent overall trying to fix the engine (finally running again….what a nightmare, no power and getting towed in and out of every port – rather undignified)

2 broken halyards

1m section of mast track pulled out (since fixed)

Torn spinnaker (repaired)

Broken steering gear (fixed)

Broken jib track (fixed)

By the time we get back to Plymouth SD will be just about ready for a round britain race….

We’ve sailed with Basking Sharks, Dolphins, and a plethora of sea birds….we nearly ran over a whale that dived under the boat just in front of us when we were doing 11 knots with the full 3m of daggerboard down under -phew!

Fleet position at Barra 18th

Fleet position at Lowestoft 13th

Daylight hours in the Shetlands: 24!

What an adventure, what a race!! I will return with lots more detail and of course the photos. Apologies again for my rather constipated blogging!!

Bye for now wish us luck on the last leg – looks like a slow one

ps please don’t forget to visit our sponsor page and donate if you can – there will be a prize draw for a sail onboard SD for all those who leave their details so don’t be shy – tell us who you are. Many thanks to all of you who have done so already

From the crew of Strontium Dog – the fastest (looking) boat in the fleet

Ok ok, guilty as charged: I am way late updating this week….something to do with sailing at breakneck speeds for days and days, breaking lots of things, no sleep, breaking more things, aaah! This race has turned into more a quest to survive than a race for Simon and me on Strontium Dog.

First leg – Plymouth to Kinsale

Took off behind the whole multihull fleet (as usual last off the line) – but quickly gained pace and managed to hold our own behind the the 2 lead boats. Once round the Eddystone it was hard on the wind all the way to Lands End, night came and so did the first little problem: the jib car on the port side started to pull the deck away right over the top of the navigation area and the electrical ‘heart’ of the boat….we bodged it up and moved the jib car forwards to an area that was better reinforced.

Rounding the Scilly islands we were up with the leaders and out came the big orange spinnacker for a screaming reach across the Irish Sea.  For 2 hours we charged ahead seeing boat speeds of 15-20 knots….big grins all round! Until a big wave caught us and pushed the boat the wrong way. The spinnaker went with a big bang and stripped the halyard at the mast..the 150sqm sail went in the water and the starboard float poked a hole in it before we managed to drag the thing back on board.

By the time we got back underway we had lost some ground. Pulling into Kinsale in light winds, we found ourselves in about 14th position (ish – check the RWYC website for the exact placing). At that point we were half way down the multihull fleet.

2 days in Kinsale – fantastic Irish hospitality, spinny repaired, deck repaired and ready to rock again!

We sailed out of Kinsale at 20.15hrs on Wednesday night – very light airs, just enough to keep the boat moving and then headed south for a run to the Fastnet rock. What ensued was probably the best sailing we have ever done. The seas were smooth and the wind got upto about 20 knots from behind. We picked up speed and spent 3-4 hours caning downwind with the big spinny pulling like  a train. We were averaging about 15 knots at this point maxing out at 18 before we were bearing away to keep the speed down and keep it under control (learning our lesson from the first leg!)?

Rounding Fastnet rock in the pitch dark was pretty fantastic. We sailed along the craggy south coast of Ireland watching the rocks take shape on the starboard side as the sun came up – spectacular. We took lots of photos – some of which I will upload later but photos just can’t hold a candle to the majesty of that place.

Nightfall on the west coast of Ireland and the wind howled up to a steady 25 knots, right in the face. This is our slowest point of sail. The waves were short and steep, choppy as hell. SD slammed from one to the next – each time she fell from one wave onto the next I swear they were made out of concrete and we were going to break her back. This went on all night. At this point the engine died and with it our electrics….Simon spent hours in those horrible conditions fighting off sea sickness trying to rebuild the fuel pump – but to no avail. Tired and beaten, slowing right down and getting beaten about – that pretty much sums it up. What a night. Fortunately I have a back up 240v genny but the little trickle charger wasn’t man enough to supply our power very well which meant long periods fighting at the helm with no autopilot….falling asleep at the helm, the boat rounding up, then a frantic melee of rope pulling and swearing to get her back on course in the frankly mental conditions. Fatigue set in hard.

Morning came and with it a change in the sea state. All was well with the world, the steering became much easier, the wind stopped howling and we were able to get a hour or two of sleep each. Brilliant. The winds continued to lighten so while Simon slep I went to shake out the reef in the mainsail. The mainsail was stuck and I could see that the gremlins had been at their dirty work again. The mast track had started to pull away from the mast and had seized everything up. Once again it was Simon who got up and freed it off of course…not fun with the boat moving about…after a half hour of grunting, sweating and choice utterances we got the sail down. But the cars holding the sail to the track had to be left up the mast.

After a short period of rest we managed to cobble some track cars together from the spares box and re-hoisted the main – obviously it could only go half up so with the light airs we lost more and more time.

The fair weather followed us all the way to the Isle of Barra in the outer hebrides (our next stop). The big spinny came out and we had a beautiful afternoon sailing with it up to Island accompanied by the odd pilot whale. As we came into the islands we sailed gently through a shoal of Basking Sharks…quite something! We crossed the line at  20.30 saturday 12th June.

Allez Van Hee a 30′ catamaran got in just in front of us – which was handy as we were able to get them to tow us to the anchorage where the RNLI helped put the boat on one of their moorings.  A night of carnage in the only pub in the village ensued. The band was great. This is a beautiful place and the sun is shining.

Lots to do – must go – Simon can’t wait to go up the mast again!

Track our progress here http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/ it’s pretty much self explanatory. The tracking device (called an ‘AIS’) will be turned on before the race start Sunday morning, we tested it today and it showed the boat out on the moorings at Plymouth. SD is clearly visible from Queen Anne’s Battery Marina where she is out on the moorings (too wide to get her onto a pontoon inside). There is also a separate race tracker being fitted which can be viewed via the race organisers website here http://www.rwyc.org/oceanic/RBI10/rbi10containtrkr.asp

Phwoaaaaar! Coming through...

Firstly – to those good souls who have thus far supported the charity spirit of our campaign, a thousand thankyous – you know who you are….anyone else who fancies joining the chosen few -who now have a seat booked (business class) straight to heaven- it’s not too late to visit our charity page http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/roundbritainchallenge (God’s airline staff are not currently union members so flights all going according to plan).

Don’t forget to let us know who you are when you donate so that we enter you into the prize draw to win a trip on SD after the race – y’see, you do get to go to heaven if you donate, I wasn’t exaggerating!

Meanwhile, back on the farm….

Final preparations for the race are well underway. SD has been nestling up a creek in the mud round the corner from Plymouth in time  for race day NEXT SUNDAY at 12 noon! For anyone who fancies coming along for a look I still have a couple of spare spectator boat tickets free to a good home. We also have some very fetching ‘Strontium Dog’ T-shirts to give away….the boat is looking fine, sporting her new radar post and numerous other gizmos required to bring her upto spec for the race scrutineers.  Simon has the unenviable job of donning a wetsuit  (watch out girls) and diving underneath to give her bottom a good old scrubbing this week – a task the man is eminently qualified for -take it from me!

And we went on a survival course up the Hamble…

Yep, the good folks at KTY yachts gave us a proper ’seeing to’ over a very long weekend getting chucked in and out of a swimming pool with full wet weather gear on, learning how crap liferafts are, and how if we fall overboard we’re more than likely going to die -that’s if the boom doesn’t smash our brains out or we don’t keel over [not in a multihull - shurely -Ed?] from smoke inhalation from numerous onboard electrical fires ….yes Keith and Yvonne painted a lovely picture of all the things that can and do go wrong in offshore sailing and how -basically- the marine ‘Emergency Services’ are unlikely to get there in time. Well at least they can retrieve the bodies and donate them to a local medical school or something! Ooh what fun! [there's a word for that, it's called being, well..""..y'know what I mean! -Ed]

Come on baby light my fire....

Keith demonstrates that one needs an angle grinder to cut rigging wire when your mast falls over. Great!

Keith shows us just how impossible it is to cut rigging wire over 6mm (our is 8-10mm) without an onboard angle grinder…this course is designed to put you off ever leaving the house – you have to be an expert in ‘psychological survival’ just to get through it without injecting diamorphine or slitting your own wrists (with an angle grinder)!

Afterwards I went straight out and bought Simon a huge knife -ostensibly as a thank you for all his hard work -but actually to keep in the cockpit for cutting our way out through the snakes’ wedding of lines that will be trying to hold us underwater and drown us in the event of a capsize….. and we can cut through the Main Sheet if it gets jammed – possibly even preventing that imminent capsize (yeah right!)….ok ok I also have a morbid fascination with knives – an obsession which has come full circle and has now crossed over into my professional life – you’d be amazed at the number of different shaped scalpel blades on the market these days! Excellent!

Skip next images if you have a weak stomach..

The only knives I don’t get on with are Stanleys…..you may remember I had a little argument with one last summer on the mooring at West Mersea which ended up with me flagging down a passing motorboat and finding my way to the Colchester General A & E dept and getting stitched up by a very talented Eastern European doctor called Eva? Well at least I finally put the Ensign to good use – as a torniquet!

Nice work Dr Eva at the Colchester General Hospital!

Stanley blade:1 Arm:0

That’s all for now folks. Watch out for my report of the race start!

Don’t forget to follow our track/position ‘in real time’ at www.RWYC.org/RBI (click on’ tracker’ or ‘position’).

Wish us luck.

If I had a penny for every time I’ve sat in a yacht club and heard some old fart going on about how anything with more than one hull won’t go to windward….I’d be much better off than I am now.

Whilst it is quite true that a block of flats supported on two great fat over-weight tree-trunk hulls will never ‘go to windward’ there is a breed of multihull out there which will go to windward with ease and grace…..and having spent 60 hours bashing upwind to get from Mersea Island round to Plymouth last weekend (our delivery trip for the start of the race on June 6th) I can truthfully report that this trimaran goes to windward perfectly well:

Distance Mersea – Plymouth: 350 miles

Distance sailed : 500 miles

Average speed : 8.3 knots

Time taken: 60 hours

We set out from the muddy island at 0100 on friday 30th April after I spent half an hour up the mast looking for missing split pins with a head torch in the freezing cold (why is it always so bleedin’ cold at the moment??)

After spending what seemed like hours motoring out in zero vis to Colne Point (where wind and waves always seem to be against me) we settled down for a short reach past the windmills out to Harwich before turning South for our first close haul down to Dover.

Getting air under the for'd half of the main hull

Onboard were 7 – me and 3 brothers (Dom, Dame and Pete), a young sailor from Mersea (Sam, 17) and an old(er) sailor from Mersea (Greg Dunn), and Kim (who is a hairy sailor from Tollesbury- a bloke – Sam was disappointed). We took it in turns to avoid being run down over night, during daylight we all chipped in as and when.

Kim (aka Sam Gamgee) Dom & Me on helm

Around Dover the relentless tacking began….in and out in and out, half way to France at times, it just went on and on and on….fortunately the wind was strong (15-25 knots) so even when we had 3 knots of tide against and our VMG was down to 2 or 3 knots, it still at least ‘felt’ like we were moving as boat speed ranged from 6-12 knots….

hard on the wind as usual

We also discovered the joy of reefing (and unreefing, and reefing, and unreefing) on this trip as the wind was ‘just too strong’ one minute and just right for a full rig the next…I reckon we reefed/unreefed about 10 times! I know we yachties are all a bunch of Goldilocks but between all the tacking, bashing about, and the reefing we were feeling a little down as we came within reach of the Isle of Wight.

I felt the boys needed a ‘lift’ so rather than being sensible and tacking round the outside of the Island, we tacked into the Solent- and thus began 3 hours of some of the most fun sailing I have had: With a strong crew on hand who were total experts at tacking by now we entered the melee and raced boat after boat driving Strontium Dog from one side of the Solent to the other. Greg was helming, Kim navigating and the rest of us either enjoying the view or lending a hand to winch like nutters on the turns.

Greg had a maniacal grin on his face the whole time which was enhanced by small flecks of left over ketchup at the corners of his mouth from breakfast….he said afterwards that it was one of his sailing highlights, and he now wants a trimaran (but I thought they didn’t go to windward – ed?)

the needles

That statement alone made my trip! I do so love a convert! (Thanks Greg you made my day).

We got through 24 miles of solent, tacking (ie going the wrong way half the time) in 3 hours…we hit 14 knots at 40 deg AWA and a max of 12ish on our AWA target of 30 degrees…..only one other yacht got the better of us – a 60 foot ’sled’ – (ok, they go upwind like shit off shovels/rats up drainpipes) just a shame we didn’t get to reach with him!!

It was a total blast and to cap it all we got photographed by a local outfit (www.boatphotos.co.uk) and I have just bought a few pics of us of them (watch this space!)

Night came after we left the needles behind. And with it, a calm of sorts. Still trying to go upwind (the wrong way) eventually the wind dropped to the point where we got the engine started and just motored into it at a paltry 4 knots or so. As Simon oft points out – don’t expect too much from a 21 hp lawnmower engine coupled to an eggwhisk for a propellor! (Don’t laugh – my first boat had a propellor that came from a dairy farm!)

dawn off start point

And so it went on. More tacking followed as we inched our way westwards through the night. Come morning and something changed. We got in close to Start Point and as we did the wind came North West – and we were off! Still hard on the wind but without the need to tack, we screamed along the coast to the entrance to Plymouth Sound at a good 10/11 knots (sticking a reef in as we went).

Sam took the helm as we entered the sound. We tacked up the sound with the apparent wind touching over 30 knots at times, back and forth, 10 knots mostly……right up to the entrance to Queen Anne’s Battery marina (our destination and the home of the Royal Western Yacht Club, hosts of the race).

sam's pants round his ankles

And on the very last tack of 60 hours of sailing, the little Staysail caught round a clutch on the mast and tore a strip out of itself 4″ long! What a bummer! But I guess tis better to find this out now rather than half way round britain – Simon is going to build a fibreglass ’shelter’ to go round this clutch and prevent any snagging during the race.

As an honorary member of the RWYC I reckoned on a phat discount at QAB marina……not!! They stuffed me for £59 and – as usual- I staggered away up the pontoon with a sore rear end having paid my dues.

After 4 hours cleaning up the boat we went to the pub. We saw a superb Blues Band (Tom Ford – if you ever get to Plymouth and see them advertised – get in there, they are superb!) And then we all piled into the Ford Galaxy and drove back to Essex. 8 people, 7 sailing bags, in a 7 seater…..6 hours driving. Well you can’t have it all can you?

Many thanks to

Simon Curtis for driving from W Mersea to Plymouth to pick us up in my old Galaxy

Sam Curtis, Greg, Kim, and the brothers Dom, Pete and Dame for unswerving good humour, hard graft, not complaining and getting us down there in good time and all in one piece.

The conversation in the clubhouse at Tollesbury Sailing Club went something like this

Me – yeah so I really need to pull the boat out before the race so we can check the daggerboard exit slot for damage and do a little mod to the rudder box.  Problem is no one wants to pull her because of the width….

Local Crane Driver – how big?

Me – 33′x43′

LCD – shouldn’t be a problem, bring her round in April and we’ll pull her with the crane

—–

Come April, things changed…’it’s not that we can’t pull her because she’s too big, we’ve tackled big multihulls before, it’s just finding space in the yard mate’

Ah. OK then: Plan B involves beaching the boat and digging a big hole under the daggerboard so we can inspect it that way.

So we did: got up at 4am, got the boat away from the dock at Brightlingsea and motored down to Osea Island.

Osea Island - dusk

The boat beached at about 11am and as the tide went out we realised that for once luck was on our side: we had managed to beach her on the only bit of sand available: above the sand was all shingle (and that would be a pig to dig) and below the shingle was shingle and mud  – which would have been equally difficult.

However once we started digging we discovered that the sand was only a few inches deep and underneath was clay….great, what a job that turned out to be! While Simon started the genny and got on with some mods on the rudder box I started digging under the boat. Digging is not my forte I can tell you! Years of nancying around in a dental surgery have not exactly developed my upper body strength….in my previous ‘life’ as a ship’s engineer it would have been easier!

I lay in that muddy hole for hours

The next issue was getting the rudder out of the box. This involved hammering it from above using various bits of driftwood which kept falling apart as a buffer between the hammer and top of the rudder stock ( the stainless steel post 50mm diameter that the rudder is attached to).

After an age of banging, out came the rudder (at which point I thought, ‘great’ if we can’t get that back in we’ll be stuffed – no steering and the tide rushing in -in the dark!)

Rudder-box mods - note Essex mud every-bloody-where!

Simon got the job done on the rudder box and we stopped for a rest. Then we decided that with only 3 hours left until the tide came in and darkness on the way we better go about getting the rudder back into the bearings in the box.

Trusty Honday Genny in cockpit

It was at this point that we had a visit from the owner of Osea Island: Mr David Cole came over dressed in his sailor’s cap and cravat – I was busy covering myself in mud under the boat – and I immediately thought ‘here we go…the racket from the genny has upset the locals ‘ but Mr Cole merely enquired after our welfare and told us not to let him distract us from our work! What a gentleman.

(Stark contrast to the Isle of Herme in the Channel Islands  – also private and owned by the Barclay Brothers: signs all around the island warn people to KEEP OFF, PRIVATE accompanied by CCTV cameras if my memory serves me correctly.)

David acquired the Island in the 60s and has been living there full time for the last 20 years or so. He sold the biggest house to an addiction/rehab clinic. The irony here is that the island was bought by Charrington Brewery at the turn of the last century for use as a ‘temperance clinic’ for alcoholics! (Talk about corporate responsibility – can you imagine an alcopop brewer setting up a clinic for the rehabilitation of underage drinkers today?!) The problem back then was that the local fisherman ended up doing a roaring trade in bringing bottles of gin etc to the island and selling them to the residents on the black market, undermining Charrington’s good work somewhat!

Getting the rudder back in did indeed turn into a nightmare hammer- marathon with Simon and me pitted against the rapidly returning tide….in the end we had to dig a hole an inch at a time, hammering from the top, and the rudder made its way back into the box at what seemed like a mm an hour! Seriously, progress was so slow that we had to mark the shaft with a marker pen to see if it was actually moving.

By then end we had dug about a metre into the clay and we were totally bushed, but we beat the tide!

OK it looks like nothing but that took us about 90 mins!

[in case you're wondering the blanket was draped over the back with the little heater running trying to get the epoxy to go off before the tide came in...the poor old genny sounds like it's being thrashed to within an inch of its life when powering the 1kw heater]

After we got the rudder back in we waited an hour or so and off she popped. Simon had the unenviable task of dragging the 2 anchors back on board. We motored down to Maylandsea (half an hour away) in the pitch dark, and parked up just in time for last orders at the Horny Toad.

My foulies, aptly named

Redding looking filthy and knackered as usual