RTIR 2011 – Report from With Alacrity

What an awesome weekend – this was the 7th time With Alacrity has sailed the RTI, and after being 2nd Sigma 38 three times in the last four years were dead chuffed to have scraped our way to the front of the Sigma 38 fleet this time round. Mind you, this was the last thing on our mind as we approached the start on a grim looking Solent and all the pre-start chat was about sailing conservatively to stay out of trouble and keeping boat and crew in one piece. Some of the media reports talk about gale force winds and 25ft waves, we didn’t see that on With Alacrity but it was definitely challenging conditions with a solid 20-25 knots through most of the race, some decent waves in the Needles Channel and around St Cats with a peak gust of 28 knots across Sandown Bay. I never had any doubts the boat and crew could get around OK, but in this race the biggest danger is the mass of other boats and their sometimes erratic sailing, so very pleased to have avoided any incidents. Great to see that in a race where only 68% of the fleet finished, all 22 of the Sigma 38s in IRC completed the course in good shape – amazing!

We got away to a decent start a boat length clear of the boats around us a few hundred metres from the Squadron end of the line, Marta got the plumb start further along the line and crossed clear ahead on port a few minutes after the start. I think Quatro/Pandanova were also away well at that end of the line. Frustratingly it took us a good 15 minutes to get into the groove and have the boat sailing well in which time we had lost ground on the boats around us and were fighting for clear air, but once past Gurnard we were in our stride and the crew collective did a great job in finding lanes of clear wind on the beat up to Hurst. By Newtown, Pavlova III had emerged as our closest threat and we crossed tacks hanging onto a lead of just a few lengths up to Hurst. Somehow, not entirely sure why, we pulled out an extra 150 metres or so between Hurst and the Needles which gave us a cushion for the rest of the race – from here on in the gap between us stayed pretty constant up to the finish.

We were expecting to go round the outside of the Varvassi wreck at the Needles, but decided to tack over to “have a look” at the inshore passage. In the event the water was quite flat by the Needles so we slipped through 20 metres from the rocks in our easiest and least stressful rounding in 7 years!

Down the back of the Island was a blast with kite up and big grins as we surfed the waves, long periods of sustained GPS speed over the ground of 9-10 knots – this against the tide! Disappointed that we broached 3 times down here, though looking around most other boats were doing the same at some point. Kicking myself for not trying to move all the crew weight back on this section –perhaps having 6 people behind the wheel would have helped keep the rudder in the water off the waves and avoided the broaches, though maybe we wouldn’t have picked up the waves so easily then and might have been ultimately slower??

The first attempt at gybing after St Cats caused some problems, the snapshackle holding the spinnaker released itself as we triggered the pole. The foredeck team quickly dropped the kite on the foredeck and it was back up within a few minutes – the second attempt at gybing went better!

The rest of the race back into the Solent was uneventful but quick and we finished in a little over 7 hours, our fastest ever circuit and I thought it was hard to imagine the conditions where a Sigma 38 could get around quicker. I was wrong!!  As I have pretty much been exposed as a Sigma 38 nerd I may as well share my spreadsheet of Sigma 38 elapsed times for the RTI since 1991.

Year

First S38

Elapsed Time

1991

Wayward

07:02:56

1992

Summer Pudding

10:58:20

1993

Scorpio

07:43:13

1994

Solent Plexus

07:36:37

1995

Red Arrow

08:21:56

1996

Solent Plexus

08:00:30

1997

Red Arrow

08:19:25

1998

Steamy Windows

09:31:18

1999

Longbow

10:11:34

2000

Longbow

08:14:47

2001

Premier Cru

07:00:46

2002

Gauntlet

07:35:44

2003

Arbitrator

08:17:04

2004

Festina

07:02:41

2005

Festina

08:57:04

2006

Festina

10:01:31

2007

Festina

08:19:20

2008

Festina

07:09:49

2009

Festina

09:23:01

2010

Monet

07:44:43

2011

With Alacrity

07:04:39

 

So our time around the Island was only the 4th fastest winning time – must try harder!  I guess that despite the stunning speed down the back of the Island, beating up the Solent was slow and a more Southerly wind would make these sections quicker.  Looks like the 7 hour barrier is the big one for a Sigma 38 to try to beat – will it ever be done?

The main benchmark, even in a handicap race like RTI, is how well you do against other one design Sigma 38s but I guess we all look at the overall result and dream about what it would take to win the whole silly race one day. On Sunday, we were 35 mins off the overall winner –  I can see with hindsight how we made 5 or so minutes of mistakes but hard to see how we could have been another 30 minutes quicker.  Below table shows the first Sigma 38s overall result for the last 10 years and their corrected time compared to the overall IRC winner.

Year

First S38

First S38
Corrected
Time

First S38
Overall
IRC Place

Overall IRC
Winning Time

Overall IRC
Winners TCC

First S38 % from 1st Overall

2001

Premier Cru

06:59:05

102

06:24:22

1.278

-8.3%

2002

Gauntlet

07:34:22

62

07:04:38

0.764

-6.5%

2003

Arbitrator

08:14:35

118

07:25:00

0.770

-10.0%

2004

Festina

07:00:34

57

06:20:32

0.910

-9.5%

2005

Festina

08:51:42

36

08:28:54

0.874

-4.3%

2006

Festina

09:54:54

42

09:08:10

0.768

-7.9%

2007

Festina

08:12:51

85

07:18:05

0.780

-11.1%

2008

Festina

07:03:48

33

06:12:55

1.371

-12.0%

2009

Festina

09:14:34

37

08:19:24

0.773

-9.9%

2010

Monet

07:37:17

64

06:57:58

0.785

-8.6%

2011

With Alacrity

06:58:17

37

06:23:46

0.769

-8.3%

 

So still a way to go for a Sigma 38 to win overall!! Looks like getting into the top 30 overall would be a good record to break.

I’m afraid With Alacrity’s on board photographer had to put his camera away after the first wave went over it (the camera did survive though) and there were a lot less photographer boats out than usual (funny that!). There are some good photos of Sigma 38s off the start on Eddie Mays website and a few photographers still putting/to put photos on their websites (SailingScenes and PWPictures) – has anybody found any other good Sigma 38 shots? The best photo I have seen was posted on YBW forum, not a Sigma 38 but worth a look at this:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/64511158@N06/5873428111/in/photostream/

Finally, a few thank yous:  to a great crew on With Alacrity, to Susan and the Class Association for organising a great pontoon party (sinking drinks and the pontoon) and of course the OD racing organised by Royal London YC on Sunday. All goes to make a great weekend and fantastic to see so many 38s turn out at E pontoon & the Sunday.

Until next year.....