Page 30 - Yachter Spring/Summer 2022

30 RACING REPORTS
PYXIS GOES WEST, 2021
Unanswerable questions hampered planning for sailing in 2021. COVID and Brexit: would anyone be allowed to sail anywhere? Having broken my wrist in February, would I be fit to sail at all? Would replacement seacocks (stuck in Italy) ever arrive? (Learning Point 1: check your seacocks when lifting out, not the day before dropping back in!) With the opening of swimming pools in April coinciding with instruction to use the wrist, I was able to work on lost upper body strength; the seacocks arrived in May; and in June I completed a weekend sail to Weymouth and hauled myself into a life-raft to renew my Offshore Personal Survival Certificate.This course is a must for all who sail offshore, giving the opportunity to try the safety equipment that we carry but hope never to use,
and to gain from others’ experience of handling problems at sea*. All was well. I entered the Solo Offshore Racing Club (SORC) Channel Week, starting 25 June.
With the likelihood of ever changing restrictions limiting cross-channel passages, the sea area was limited to the English coast, and entry numbers capped.The first leg was to be eastabout from Cowes and round the island to Dartmouth. However, in a sign of things to come, the forecast was for little wind, decreasing. Quick change of plan
to take the shorter route westabout.The tide at the scheduled start time, perfect for the eastabout course, was obviously wrong for the new direction. SORC often uses a competitor start boat procedure, allowing the fleet to motor in the right direction and start when conditions are suitable, so we waved goodbye to Dave (our race officer for the first start), and started in Christchurch Bay. As expected, the sail was slow until
we stopped on the Shambles – which was shambolic: a pitch black, noisy, tidal washing machine.AvoidingWest Shambles buoy
was confusing, with Pyxis seeming to be
pointing well north of it yet with the plotter showing a track going south of it.The track winning over the heading, Pyxis avoided
the buoy and continued down tide into Lyme Bay where, one by one, we got bored with drifting, and the engines came back on. Recognising the risks of single-handed sailing and that, if assistance is needed,
the nearest help is likely to be another competitor, there is an ethos of watching
out for fellow sailors and, at this point, one boat expressed concern about another boat that was sailing ‘oddly’. Unable to raise the competitor concerned on VHF, three of
us returned to check on him. Fortunately
a false alarm and those that were still
racing received appropriate redress for the diversion, the race being won by the slowest boat in the fleet (Learning Point 2: never give up).