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Manu, one of the Indian members of my team, is over in the UK on a three month secondment. What can I show him of England that he might like to see? 

Well he is from Delhi so how about the sea? 

I look up the web-site of a company that I have used for weekend trips on the Solent ( http://www.oceanadventuressailing.com ) and find that they have two crew berths left for a very special weekend trip.

Once a year the Island Sailing Club in Cowes on the Isle of Wight organise what they claim to be the worlds largest yacht race (measured by the number of boats that are competing).

The course is fairly simple, start at Cowes and go anti-clockwise around the island which is about 50 miles.

They do pick a weekend with suitable tide times, i.e. with an ebb tide to take the fleet down to the Needles, and then eventually the flood will help you up the south coast of the island before you turn back into the Solent and head back to the finish at Cowes.

The Solent is the UK’s “home of yachting” so they do get a good number of boats registering for the race. In recent years that “good” number has been just over 1700!

A sea covered with spinnakers, will give him something to talk about when he goes home…

So I persuade Manu to join me on a sailing adventure, convincing him that you don’t actually need to know how to swim to go sailing.

When the day arrives, we leave the office in London after work, pick up the car and head down to the river Hamble to join the boat. 

We have a crew of six plus Giles, the skipper, and three of the crew are novices so the plan is to spend the Friday before the race getting everybody up to a point where they know what sailing is about.

OK, let’s admit it we are going out for the spectacle, we don’t expect to win, but we would prefer not to embarrass ourselves.

Friday dawns with fine weather but very light airs, not ideal for sail training.

OK so lets motor across to Cowes and let the crew explore it for a bit (we do have three ladies aboard and Cowes does have a lot of nice shops…), perhaps we will get some wind in the afternoon.

We do get a little after lunch, enough to demonstrate what tacking is about.

Then it is back into the Hamble, down to the local pub for a meal, and back to Quintessence to grab a few hours sleep.

Our section of the fleet is due to start at 05:40 and we need to get out to the line so it will be an 04:00 departure.  Set the alarm for 03:30!

It is just getting light as we pull out into the river and join the flotilla of yachts heading over to Cowes, but still dark enough to need the navigation lights on.

Several of the boats astern of us have some weird ideas of the lights they should be showing.  Port and Starboard but no steaming light, are they actually sailing down the river in the twilight? Masthead tricolour and a steaming light, I can see a green over white are they trawling?

As we reach Southampton Water we can see the cruise companies are doing their bit to avoid causing chaos at the start, four large cruise liners slipping in to dock in Southampton between 04:00 and 05:00. 

Then it is down to the “holding zone” just south of the Bramble Bank, and safely out of the main shipping channel while we wait for out class to be called to the start line.

Sunrise, and the ebb is just cutting in so we have to make sure we stay the right side of the line. Doing a loop around the extension of a two mile start line to restart if we drift over is not an option. We have a light NNE breeze so the wind is also trying to take us over.  

Mainsail up and ready, we are drifting down so fly the genoa as well.

Two minutes to the start, get ready, one minute, go for the line…

Didn’t quite get the timing right, we are at the back of our group but we will have clear air, at least until the next group starts.

Ok so we have a Bf 2 -3 NNE, and a first leg that is to the SW. The organising committee couldn’t have hoped for a better combination.

90% of the yachts have a spinnaker flying, and it is a great spectacle.

Quintessence doesn’t actually try to, spinnakers and novice crews don’t really go together, and even I have only been on boats with a kite up two or three times..

Still we are gaining on the boats ahead and actually manage to pass at least one with her kite up. We know we passed her, as the separation was only about 6 feet as we took the wind out of her sails and went past!

OK the next IRC class has now started, ten minutes after our group and there are a lot of spinnakers astern and coming up fast…

I recognise that spinnaker, here comes Prime Evil, the boat I was on for my Inverness to Gosport trip a couple of years ago.. 

Through Hurst Narrows, trying to stay in the fastest tidal flow and now what do we do about rounding the Needles?

Giles looks at the fleet ahead and reckons that the ebb is taking them well past and so if we aim for the lighthouse we will actually go diagonally past it…

Right so that solves the question that some of of the skippers might be asking “Just who was that goose-winging towards the lighthouse?”

Round the Needles light, trying hard to avoid a dangerous wreck just SW of the lighthouse as we are really close in.

Yarmouth lifeboat is hovering near the rocks, are they expecting trouble around this point of the course, or are they just sitting in the prime spectator spot?

This is close quarter manoeuvring with a vengeance. We are catching six boats ahead of us but unfortunately they are in line abeam and about 2 feet apart. We have another two boats on our port side, with the closest about 6 feet away, and another two just as close to starboard. Where do I go? 

A gap opens in the line ahead of us and we squeeze through.

OK now to reach down to St Catherine’s Point, the most southerly point on the island.

Ahead the sea is covered in sails but look behind and there are hundreds more.

The wind is fluky here, gusts coming down the gullies on the cliffs, the boat rounding up as we spill wind from the main….

We see boats behind us that passed us before so perhaps our inshore route around the needles did gain us some ground.

A close reach towards the point but aiming a little high just in case the wind shifts as we get closer to the point… The old girl is flying along!

Alex, one of our crew, is talking to his mother on his mobile.  She is on holiday in Ventnor, which we are now approaching, and looking out to see if she can see us.

Which boat is yours? Well she is white with white sails (like 90% of the fleet!) and here is our sail number…

OK can you see a small boat with red hulls and a red stripe at the to top of her sail?

Yes! Well we are on the one just going behind her! 

From Ventnor we will have to tack our way to the NE.

We could stay inshore and use short tacks but are likely to get s lot of crossing vessels there. 

“Lets take a long port tack bound out offshore to avoid most of the traffic and then go onto starboard when we clear the hazards off the island.”

Well it did make things easier but probably cost us a lot of time and positions as the tide was better closer inshore.

Thread our way through the big ships in the Nab anchorage area and then tack and head for the fort off Bembridge.

Not many boats this far out so did they know something we didn’t?

Slip through inside the fort and we have a new landmark ahead. Steer for the power station!

We are closing the coast of the island and getting involved with the rest of the fleet again.

Off Ryde with a lot of boats around us and we see the car ferry trying to get through the fleet. A sudden roar of engines and here comes the hovercraft.

I grab a quick snapshot with the camera and later see that the boat ahead seems to have got very close to the hovercraft!

There are two finish lines, and we need the southern one, i.e. to the south of the committee boat. It would be a real pain to get disqualified now just for crossing the wrong line!

Look out for other boats in our group this is where positions are won or lost.

Across the line at 14:52, nine hours and twelve minutes for the circuit,

Now to clear the area as quickly as possible.

Cowes will be manic tonight with boats rafted out six or seven deep, so we declare our finish using a mobile phone and head for quieter waters at the Lymington Yacht Haven.

A quick shower etc, and then its up to the local pub for a meal and then hit the sack after a very tiring day.