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Isle Of Wight Sailing Regatta |
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 The company I work for regularly take part in an annual sailing regatta between Port Solent and the Isle of Wight. This year I had been offered a place as a prize for some achievement award. Not one to turn down an opportunity for new experiences I promptly accepted.
It turned out that the department I work in were already putting together a crew, with our boss being the skipper. This was something he did all the time, so he was pretty experienced and the ideal choice. As for the rest of us, we were very much a bunch of land lubbers, only the bosses mate had any experience of sailing at all.
We headed down to Port Solent Friday afternoon, and were introduced to our yacht. A little smaller than I had expected, I remembered thinking how on earth we were going to sleep 8 people on board, but soon found out its quite surprising what you can fit in those small holds.
The sailing started out on Saturday morning, following an 'interesting' night aboard the yacht (Note to self: Make sure your fellow ship mates don’t have the ability to snore like an elephant with a kazoo stuck up its trunk). The weather was glorious sunshine, and there were even a few concerns it would be too good for sailing, but the wind picked up just enough by the time we headed out the harbour. Before the regatta started our skipper showed us the ropes (Quite literally), and we split the various roles to be carried out during the race. Then it was time, the claxon sounded and we were off. At this point I found out that racing sailing yachts is not quite the same as on land. The first buoy we were heading for lay into the wind, which means you have to sail a course of zigzags. This makes it very difficult to work out who is ahead of whom, as often we were heading one way, while everyone else sailed another, only to converge later on.
 The first race ended with our boat coming fifth. A commendable position considering all but two of our crew had never stepped foot on a sailboat before. We had a little time for some lunch on the boat before getting back to more racing. This time after honing our newly found sailing skills in the last race, we managed second place.
 After a night of celebration and much merriment on the Isle of Wight, we headed out for our second day of racing. Sunday was another day of sunshine, and the lack of wind delayed the start somewhat, but gave us the chance to catch a few rays. This time we were going to take place in a pursuit race, where the boats start in reverse order of where they came the previous day. We started towards the back, over twenty minutes behind the race leader, but after an unscheduled diversion by four of the boats (Some confusion over which buoy was part of the course, and a case of follow the leader), we made up a few positions. There were some good close quarter battles for positions, almost colliding with one boat, but we finally crossed the line in sixth.
All in all the weekend was thoroughly enjoyed by everyone, and Id recommend people give it a go at least once.
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