Sailing Samurai: 'One year before the mast'

2013 kicked off with three weekends competing in the aptly named ‘Frostbite’ series. Whilst January was quite a ‘snowy’ month, we did manage to avoid any serious snow fall on the weekends we were sailing! Saturdays were generally a training day with the main racing taking place on the Sundays.

Whilst is was a bit ‘fresh’ on the river Hamble, (with most crew layered up, resembling ‘Michelin Men’) it always seemed to be sunny on race days.

We were sailing a lovely little boat called ‘Jazzy Jellyfish’ (a very agile J109) which was a lot of fun to race! Working the foredeck, it was nice not to have to worry about the usual spinnaker pole, swinging around, regularly threatening to give anyone on the pointy end a good ‘brain-rattler’! Instead, Jazzy had a ‘retractable bowsprit’ which made life a lot easier (not to mention a whole lot safer!).

Cowes week on board 'Hurricane'

Another thing that made life easier during races was that we had good consistency of crew over a set period of time. It was great to get to know everyone a bit better each weekend and the banter was flying thick and fast! The other bonus was coming back to shore and relaxing in one of the local pubs on the Hamble and relaxing by a roaring open fire!

Soon winter gave way to spring and we found ourselves back in the mix amongst the Sunsail racing series out on the Solent! This time we were racing the Beneteau F40’s which were slightly bigger than ‘Jazzy’. On the foredeck we had a few more ropes to worry about as we were now back to using a spinnaker pole. (the luxury of Jazzy’s ‘bowsprit’ was very much lamented!!).

A lot of the Frostbite crew had returned, along with crew who I’d got to know during the 2012 season, so all in all we had quite an experienced team building nicely! As far as a ‘scratch’ crew, we were working well together and competing well against the established crews (who had religiously sailed together every weekend, on and off season).

For me, one of the best weekends was my final weekend sailing with the crew in August. Everyone had about 7 weekends of experience tucked under their belts and together we had built up a lot of consistency in performance and results. It was good to see Neil being freed up from the helm for a change and stalking the decks, jumping in and helping out where needed. I often joke that the reason I work on the bow is so I cannot hear his eloquent delivery of orders. When the air turns blue because things aren't going quite his way, I can either pretend to not hear him or simply nod and shrug my shoulders! On this day the orders were extremely clear and delivered from just over my shoulder! It was good to see the skipper getting his hands dirty!

'Dark and Stormy'! -Not my usual expression
but events 'off the water' weren't
quite going my way this weekend as I remember!

The other bonus was that I had the privilege of working with the ‘dream team’ again – ‘Kazza’ and ‘Dazza’! Bow work could be described as trying to sort out a giant cat’s cradle, whilst balancing on a see-saw, which has been placed in a washing machine on a high spin cycle!

Working with KJ and Darren, it makes life so easy. You have two people that understand when something needs to happen and how it needs to happen! They also have a great ‘Zen’ like approach to sorting out problems quickly, efficiently and with minimum fuss! I do trust the whole crew, but these two have my whole-hearted faith.

They both are very analytically minded and have excellent visualisation when it comes to anticipating what we need to do to get the spinnaker up, or gybe the kite. Not to mention they bring the right level of physicality to get the job done!

A very tired but happy crew takes a rest after
a stormy day on the Solent

One manoeuvre I was really impressed with was coming to the downwind mark under spinnaker. We gybed the spinnaker, pulled out the foresail, dumped the spinnie, rounded the mark, immediately gybed the headsail. All within the space of 2 minutes! Now this might not make sense to the uneducated, but basically it’s all about what can go wrong. –With all this maneuvering, sail changes and keeping eyes open for other boats, the list of f##k ups is exceptionally long and the probability of messing it up and slowing the boat down is very real! Thanks to the ‘dream team’ we managed to successfully avoid an unpleasantness and kept the foredeck ‘clusterf##k-free’!

Saying that, on a different race we did have the mother of all Spinnaker wraps though! To the point where we nearly broached! Poor Vicky (out spinnaker trimmer) was virtually hanging off the boom with her legs trailing in the water! Luckily we managed to recover it (thanks to some quick thinking from Darren). It was caused by a sudden gust that caught most of the fleet out and we were probably right on the limit to be flying a spinnaker to be fair. It was really ‘seat of your pants’ sailing at its best that weekend!. With the whole crew there was a real feeling of playing it ‘fast and loose’!
We had nothing to lose against the leaders of the pack and we really took the battle them and grind out some great results!

Unfortunately I had to step back from sailing as my JuJitsu commitments needed to take priority. I had to prepare for the United Nations Competition taking place in South Africa in October. I do not begrudge missing the rest of the sailing session for this as I really wanted to go to the competition and give it my all. I was really pleased and proud of the results that everyone got in September and October!

I now have a break from everything over Christmas. No Ju Jitsu, sailing or surfing. Time to recharge, catch up with family and prepare for a busy 2014!

I would just like to take this opportunity to thank all the skippers and crew I have sailed with this year. It has been a brilliant year of racing and look forward to sailing with everyone again in 2014!