Today’s cancellation of the first day’s racing in the WIORA Championship at Galway gives some idea of the conditions being experienced by the Sevenstar Round Britain and Ireland fleet as they race northwards along Ireland’s west coast towards the next turn at the remote Scottish island of St Kilda writes W M Nixon.
Near or real gales from between southwest and west, with the pressure markedly increased by the exceptionally dense air, provide exceptionally challenging sailing conditions. The succession of sail changes needed to optimise for the weaving wind direction results in crews getting into a sweat under their foul weather gear. And then, as they settle down for a while under the new sail configuration, they find they’ve become very cold and tired without the adrenalin pumping, and the general energy-sapping dampness is all-pervading.
That said, doing well is a great stimulus, and aboard Phil Sharp’s Class 40 Imerys Clean Energy they’re right in the groove, and should be past St Kilda before dark tonight, a clear 30 miles ahead of Corum and Concise 8.
The Irish entry, the Sunfast 3600 Bam! (Conor Fogerty & Simon Knowles) is west of the Aran Islands, and has pulled back a couple of miles on sister-ship Game On, but there’s still a margin of 15 miles to recover after they’d lost more ground through damage to their A5 (that’s the storm asymmetric). The tear has now been fixed, but making sail repairs under such conditions is not a project any sane person would seek to enjoy. And there’s every indication that it’s going to continue to blow big boots from the southwest to west for the next couple of days at least, after which the winds start to get messy.
Meanwhile, those armchair sailors who have doubted the very existence of the Great Foze Rock, the lonely and unlit westerly outlier of the Blasket Islands, have their answer thanks to the appropriately-named Class 40 Aparito, which took a snap going past at 0850 this morning.
The Great Foze is no apparition. It’s for real. But somehow now, thanks to Spellcheck, everyone seems to think it’s called the “Great Froze Rock”. It ain’t. It’s just plain Foze. As any Kerryman knows.
Race tracker here: http://yb.tl/rbni2018