THE RORC 75TH ANNIVERSARY ROUND BRITAIN RACE 2000
written on board by Darren Newton

This is the tale of the Criterion Round Britain and Ireland Race on Dazzler, a Dazcat 15m catamaran built for the purpose of unadulterated pleasure and excitement at sea. Sailed by Mike, Harvey, Ann, Guy, Alistair, Bill, Biffa and Daz.

We first launched Dazzler on 1st July 2000. Five days later we were sailing. Two tacks and two gybes after launching we were competing in the RORC race from Cowes to Dinard, coming third in the race overall. This was our shakedown race to qualify for the Criterion Round Britain and Ireland Race in August and after a few days experiencing the delights of St Malo we sailed her back to the yard in Millbrook, experiencing variable conditions including a Force 7 to windward, which gave us an idea as to her nature and confirmed our confidence in the boat and her sea keeping abilities.

To enjoy oneself in what is, realistically, a hostile environment, one has to be prepared. You need to know your boat will look after you, so you must look after your boat. To this end we made final preparations for the RBR on the River Hamble. All safety equipment was checked and then scrutinized by RORC. Food and water was stowed and much discussion went into trying to make sure the boat wasn’t overloaded and removing unnecessary items.

We had the final crew meeting while eating Chinese food, potentially our last shore-based meal for two weeks. It was decided to run a watch system with the crew split in two groups sailing four hour alternating watches during the night, and six hour watches during the day. This rotates the midnight to 4am – or dog – watch, which can be particularly horrible with zero visibility and breaking waves crashing over the deck. Luckily this is only rarely the case. On a still, clear night it can be gorgeous, with bright stars, shooting meteorites and phosphorescent wake trails streaming from the boat’s twin sterns – on this trip the best displays were witnessed off the coast of the Scottish Highlands.

We had eight people on board, all with different backgrounds and jobs. The main thing we had in common was a zealous love of multihull sailing, respect for the sea and, most importantly, the desire to enjoy the race for its own sake. Life on board revolved around some simple rules: eat well; sail fast and have fun. Rules we obeyed happily. We experienced some of the most beautiful and awe inspiring sights and weather conditions mother nature can provide, which created close racing between us and our competitors.

To maintain energy and enthusiasm you need to eat good food. Our watch system allowed us to keep relatively regular meal times. Not being an out-and-out race boat, where we would have had to live off reconstituted dehydrated meals, we had a selection of fresh and canned food, together with pre-made stew which was frozen beforehand and kept in a cool box, lasting well into day five. Fresh vegetables lasted through to day ten, particularly the onions, peppers, potatoes and white cabbage. Meals varied, depending on the weather conditions, from exotic buffet meals accompanied with wine and beer on nice sunny days, to add-a-can stew in rougher conditions. Otherwise we just helped ourselves to the special treats and snacks department; other than the usual chocolate bar snacks, fruit pastels proved a favourite, giving the required sugar hit to keep energy up at night. Oriental pot noodles from our local Chinese wholesaler were absolutely fab, as was hot chocolate with a dash of brandy ... For dessert, homemade fruitcakes and Heinz canned treacle pudding with Devon Ambrosia custard went down well!

The sea life on our trip was diverse, including visits from porpoises, dolphins, seals, whales and various sea birds. Our first visit was from porpoises off Ireland in 40-50mph of wind, surfing Dazzler at 20-25 knots. When the dolphins joined us they were flying out of the wave faces in formation aquabatics – as if excited to be playing with the sleek lines of our boat. Further on, after rounding Muckle Flugga, we were visited by about ten silver-backed dolphins that played between the hulls at about 12 knots, looking curiously up at us as we lay on the forward net looking down at them.

Later that night, becalmed off Flanborough Head, we saw what looked like two surfacing deep-sea divers. After further inspection of our craft they swam closer to reveal themselves as seals, probably thinking we were a fishing boat and hoping for an easy dinner. Still later that night, when the other watch had gone to bed and we remained becalmed, a whale surfaced, announcing its presence with a blast from its waterspout. It then swam slowly around Dazzler in ever decreasing circles. Lucky for us I guess that it wasn’t mating season; Dazzler is a very sexy boat.

Getting back to the race … Dazzler’s performance was great, and the crew very resourceful in trying out new ideas on sail combinations. One of the amazing effects of sailing a fast boat is its apparent wind – the wind created by the boat moving forward. Setting our spinnaker created apparent wind as the boat moved forward, which in turn let us pull in the mainsail to gain more drive, and in the case of Dazzler, and the other high speed boats, made us go even faster, creating yet more apparent wind!

We also made good use of setting the main and jib to power us up in light conditions, achieving double wind speed on the log at times, even when there was no wind; setting the boat up at right angles on the two knots of tide allowed us to keep moving at 3-4 knots.

The final morning, as the sun rose, we spotted Sailthatdream.com on our port side and Incisor of Wight behind us. We knew the battle for the lead was on. Slowly we pulled away from Incisor, but Sailthatdream.com seemed to be holding us till after lunch, when we started grinding the spinnaker sheet, building speed with the apparent wind while taking all the energy from the wave sets, acheiving speeds of 14-16 knots in 8-10 knots of true wind. After two hours Sailthatdream.com was out of sight, the wind was dropping and the tide was going to turn when, in sight of the finish, the wind stopped altogether and, during a sail change, we lost all steering control and started to drift through the mooring buoys off Cowes, thinking 'Come on tide, please don't change now!'. When we got a little puff of wind to put us on course to win the race, screams of excitement and a blast from our claxon announced our victory. Arriving alongside the dock in Cowes we were met by RORC and Criterion with three bottles of champagne to celebrate.

All in all a good race was had on a new Dazcat sports cat straight out of the box, with no major breakages bar the toilet seat and a split pin on the boom!

Our thanks to RORC for organising a great race, and to Criterion for sponsoring it, and to all the other competitors for such a fun competiton.