Hilary's Blog
Hilary's Blog
Solo sailing round the Isle of Wight
So much for the English summer, parts of the country are flooded and the weather for the past few weeks has been truly unsailable. However the wind gods must have been on my side as the perfect weather window opened up on the day we had chosen to attempt my solo sail around the Isle of Wight.
Tuesday 24th July 2007, dawned bright and sunny. After a 5.00 AM wake up call, “Me Too” and I set off from Cowes just over an hour later than we’d anticipated, crossing the Royal Corinthian club start line at 08:12.43. Thanks to Mark McNeill, from the Royal Corinthian Yacht Club who officially started us and for getting up horribly early to be on standby.
As we left Cowes I had yet to discover whether or not the weather conditions would be suitable for me to sail around the south side of the island. Conflicting weather reports put the wind speed on the south of the island at anywhere from force 2 to force 5.
We started out pointing high into the wind. The Artemis 20 points better than any other boat I have sailed and we seemed to fly along with 7-8 knots of breeze from the northwest. With just 3 hours before the tide turned I knew we had to make it in an hour less than we had allowed for. Thanks to the ability of the Artemis to sail almost directly into the wind we managed it easily, making it to The Needles by 11:00am.
Fortunately my ace safety boat team reported that weather on the south western side of the island was absolutely perfect. As we rounded the Needles I eased the sheets and turned away from the wind. The tide was with us and we made the next major landmark, St. Catherine’s Point, at 12:30pm although it felt to me as if we had covered the south west coast of the island in a matter of minutes! I had been having much too much fun surfing the waves in “Me Too” to notice the passage of time! From St. Catherine’s Point I again eased the sails to sail up the south eastern side of the island.
Again we had covered the distance fast enough to have kept the tide with us, but now the wind was at my back, making the boat harder to control as this is the time when accidental jibes are most likely to happen. I was still able to “goose wing” (putting the headsail on the windward side of the boat whilst keeping the mainsail on the other side), surf and generally enjoy myself whilst I suspect that my two safety boat teams were having as much fun as I was!
As we began to approach Foreland I started to think about the likely tide and wind directions in the Solent. I realised that I would be facing into the wind again and also knew that the forecast had predicted increasing wind speeds perhaps reaching 20 knots in the gusts. As we rounded up into the wind I had arrived in the Solent ahead of schedule and the tide was very much against us, whilst the wind was still in our faces. Suddenly I was faced with a wind that was force 4, gusting force 5, coming straight from the direction in which I needed to sail. It never abated.
For what seemed like hours I tacked back and forth, making almost no progress. There are forts at the entrance to the Solent, built during the Second World War, and some submarine traps still remain beneath the water near the shore. Despite being desperate to get out of the wind and into the shelter of the land I had to stay near the fort so that my almost 2m-long keel did not get caught up in the submarine traps, whilst at the same time avoiding being swept on to the fort itself. With so much wind, the motors on my winches decided that they were unable to pull my sails right in. This meant that I was now unable to sail within about 50° of the wind. I remember seeing the fort over my right shoulder and thinking, “thank goodness I’ve made it past that hazard”, only to tack and find that it was now ahead of me on my left!
If I thought that was hard work, things were about to get even more interesting! We are currently using a sail bag to prop my head up when I am not wearing my heavy “oily” jacket. (My motto has always been to adapt and use whatever is at hand - a year in the “Brownies” obviously wasn’t wasted after all!). A gust of wind blew the free end of the sail bag over my face so that, for a minute or so, I was sailing almost completely blind!
For once I was grateful for the fact that the wind was so strong as the next thing I knew another huge gust blew the whole sail bag out from behind my head and into the sea. Visibility suddenly improved, but now my head fell backwards so that I was now only able to see the upper part of the mast.
After seemingly hours of getting nowhere and thinking for a minute that I was completely lost, for the first (and, I vowed, the last) time I thought about asking my support team to tow me home. The thought lasted perhaps 2 minutes and then I realised that it was my staying power now that would determine whether I would ever make it around Britain. Whenever people have told me that something is impossible I have always delighted in proving them wrong. I guess I’m just stubborn, but that memory was enough to make me dig my heels in and I told myself to toughen up.
It took us two hours to sail from the fort to Ryde pier – a distance of just 4 miles! Gradually, though, the wind shifted around to the northwest a little, which meant that my inability to pull the sails right in was no longer a problem. The tide also began to slacken so that I was no longer being soaked every 10 seconds. I was still getting regular waves in the face, and shipping a lot of water in through my spinnaker hatch, but now I was making progress and I realised that I knew exactly where I was, as I recognised familiar landmarks.
Every cove I passed looked like it might be the last one before Cowes, but when it turned out to be just another cove I refused to let myself wonder how many more there would be. Finally we reached a cove that I recognised as being “definitely” the last one when our last major obstacle appeared in the shape of the Queen Mary II coming out of Southampton.
What would have been a wonderful sight at any other time just sapped more energy as I had to “sit still” and wait for her to pass. Normally I would have just sailed in a circle, but without being able to let my sails in or out I had to try and find other ways of going nowhere in a force 4 wind without running out of water and ending up aground. With each tack towards the shore I prayed that the water was deep enough and my luck held. After the Queen Mary 2 had passed, I pointed the boat’s nose as close to the direction I wanted to travel in as I could and headed back out into the Solent.
Seeing a Red Jet come in to dock was a huge boost. Suddenly the last 3 hours slog had all been worth it and, although it still seemed to take forever to make it across the finish line with my painter now wrapped around my rudder, “Me Too” and I crossed the Royal Corinthian finish line at 19:20.05, some 11 hours and 7 minutes after starting out. I’d made it around the Isle of Wight!
My highlight was definitely the sail down the back of the island, where I hit a top speed of 11 knots and for several hours I was averaging 7-8 knots.
This trip feels like a kind of baptism into the world of “real sailors”. In my own mind I have always felt I have been someone who just got incredibly lucky and managed to sail the Channel more by luck than design. Until this year I had probably spent less than 100 hours in control of a boat, although strangers may have seen me as a yachtswoman, I certainly didn’t. I feel that I have now gone some way towards deserving that title, although I still have a huge amount to learn.
My charity, “Hilary’s Dream Trust”, whose goal will be to help those with disabilities and/or significant disadvantage fulfil their sailing dreams, is now on its way to being formally established. I hope that this sail will have helped raise the profile of disabled sailing a little more and may encourage people to help me raise enough money to get me to the start line for my Round Britain sail. I will be raising money for my charity whilst I am sailing around Britain.
It just remains for me to thank a few people. Pindar, the first company to sponsor me and who helped get me across the English Channel. Pindar continues to support me and it was through them that I met my second sponsor, Artemis Investment Management. They have provided me with my wonderful boat. The Artemis 20, was built by Vizual Marine who then adapted it especially for me. They also worked with Canadian Steve Alvey who installed his unique ‘sip-puff’ system which turned out, fortunately, to be as waterproof as he had assured me!
The performance of the Artemis 20 entirely exceeded my expectations, especially in the short choppy water in that long beat home as water poured over the headsail and in through the spinnaker hatch. My friend Viv Thompson and BTS Mouldings have built me a wonderfully comfortable and adaptable gimballed seat without which I simply could not sail this boat.
I must also thank Kels Gilkison, my project manager, and Ailsa Angus, my logistics manager, for pulling this whole thing together. It’s impossible to thank everyone, but the UK Sailing Academy has supported me throughout my sailing. Simon Davies from the UKSA provided weather information which was invaluable. UKSA also provided a safety boat crewed by some great friends, Bob Ludlow, Brett Jordan-Davis and Alex Lister. Thanks also to Jon Fay who provided the other safety boat along with his crew of Chris Packer. Thanks also to Darren Baker for his local knowledge and taking Andrew Hawthorn out in his new RIB to film me. Mark Lloyd also came out and took some wonderful photographs.
Page last updated on 27 July 2007 at 13:24