The weather in Ramsgate was fantastic. Ramsgate had laid on a full festival and we were made to feel very welcome which went some way to making up for a bad race.
The Offshore Circuit racing was held on the Saturday and Sunday and saw some spectacular moments with the small 19 foot boats turning over and several sinking! This proved exciting for all to watch and drew thousands of spectators.
Sunday dawned fine again with a gentle breeze and very warm conditions. Too warm to be wearing race overalls, life jackets and helmets! The sea was fairly flat with the occasional large wash from a ship but nothing horrendous just created a few fantastic ‘airborne’ moments!
The course was about 84 nautical miles and very complicated with varying laps. It was a true offshore course with very little coastal marks. In fact, you could have ended up in France quite easily (umm now there’s a thought)! In fact, some of the stages proved very eerie where you could not see land and were relying on a compass and nothing else.
At 1pm we set off for a 1.30pm start, all dressed up in race gear and VERY hot. Then the start was delayed by about 30 minutes. Now we had to wait in the scorching heat and swelter! Not pleasant. Finally, after an hour of waiting, we were given a two minute warning and we got ready to set off. Lined up, the flag went down and again about 35 boats thundered along together like the charge of the Light Brigade. This is when we realised we had a problem, my foot was down hard but the boat was going nowhere and worse still she was snaking around like a car on ice. I was panicking, was it my driving, was there something wrong with the boat? We carried on but people were overtaking us and we were getting very frustrated. The harder I pushed the boat the more she would snake and dive about, it was very dangerous and could have caused it to turn over.
The one exciting moment of the race was with the Sky Sports/Meridian TV helicopter filming the event. He could obviously see we were having problems and chose to film us on an entire leg which seemed to go on for ever! He followed us so low I could not even hear Daren giving navigation instructions. The boat flew along and Daren’s comment was ‘make it look good Jack’ so I tried to drive it hard once more and again we dived off to the left giving ourselves a huge fright as it nearly turned over ..Darens’ next comment was ‘not THAT good!’. It was so frustrating.
At least when we see the programme we will watch the film with interest and it will prove useful to see exactly what was happening. I think the helicopter crew also enjoyed filming us waiting for something to happen, I have never known a helicopter film a boat for quite that period of time..well apart from the leader!
By now the race was three quarters over, Daren was furious, I just wanted to finish and it was not an enjoyable hour and a half. However, others also had a torrid time and many broke down, took the wrong course etc etc. Nothing in racing is ever dull! And we provided good entertainment for the many thousands of people watching from the shore.
What was the problem….without getting too technical we had had to give back a borrowed gearbox which suited our propeller and the boat. I had borrowed another at short notice but it was a completely different shape and without time to test an unknown quantity. Unfortunately this turned out to be our downfall as it caused the back of the boat (the stern) to lift up and the nose of the boat to dive into the water giving little or no control. A lesson to be learned and we are now building the right gearbox for the next race.
We finally finished sixth out of 12 boats so not disastrous but not great either. We live to fight another day.