If you haven’t read A brief history of HOEOCA racing, I suggest you pause and take a look at that now as it covers much of the development of the club’s racing section, which is where the embryonic idea of  taking part in the iconic Fastnet race was implanted into the club’s membership. Alternatively you can just read on to see what happened ‘under the sheets’ for the real Fastnet story…...

It felt so right at the time, however I don’t believe any members of the HOEOCA’s first fastnet team knew exactly what legacy was being created when they signed up for the race. The dreams of taking part in the Fastnet race took hold in an already active core of HOEOCA racers following Keith Harding's Fastnet talk late in 2012. Keith played an incredibly important part in guiding us through the set up of that first race and took a group of nine mixed experience sailors through a journey of excitement, terror and fulfilment.

Fastnet 2013

Generation Z Fastnet’ers were a relatively evenly balanced bunch of boys and girls with a couple of hooligans thrown in for good measure. We started our Fastnet year with two training weekends when we demonstrated, mainly to Keith our skipper, how inexperienced we were under big spinnakers. Nevertheless we went into our first fastnet qualifier with high hopes of an enjoyable race to St Peter Port, Guernsey.

To say it was anything but a baptism of fire would be a huge understatement. Thankfully (and through the power of email history) I have been able to check back on the details of our first RORC race documents, to say the clues were there is a bit of an understatement.

Accompanying the race instructions we received a flyer providing details of Guernsey Air and search rescue.

We set out on a Friday evening in steady conditions through the needles channel working to windward knowing conditions would deteriorate but morale was high. As night drew in and the wind increased so did the speed of the boat, the pitch of the waves and the volume of water coming overdeck. By the early hours we had gone from comfortable to downright painful. As we rounded Casquets Lighthouse the shallowing seabed sent the waves into overdrive and in pitch darkness riding up and down steep sided 10m waves was perilous. Steph, one of the most experienced amongst us, took a particularly bad hit as she was thrown off the helm driving the dangers of our situation home. Down below had become a dreadfully unpleasant place to be. Everything was wet and sea sickness took its toll, how the vomit from a fellow crew member missed going down the inside of John Kissack's oily trousers as he wrestled to pull them on for his forthcoming watch I’ll never know.

Despite the heavy night we arrived in St Port Peter and moored up safe and sound next to another Beneteau 40.7 the young crew of which had the audacity to say we’d done well for an “old crew”. To be fair, having spent some time in banter with them while I cleaned the bilges out of Ballistic, I learned their crew had an average age well under 30 and they had all spent the whole race on the rail so it turned out to be a fair cop. We raced against that same boat throughout the season and it became a poignant and sad moment to reflect on our encounters as the boat was the ill fated Cheeky Rafkiki which sank mid atlantic the following year.

Our Fastnet campaign continued that season with races to Dieppe, St Malo and the Fastnet itself. Life long friendships were formed and forged forever. We sat to leeward under condensing mainsails wishing the wind to return. Fairy feet became ‘a thing’ and many of us learned a whole new philosophical way of thinking, later to be inderingly termed ‘boat bollocks’. To round off the campaign we enjoyed the pleasure of broadreaching in long fetching seas out and back from the Fastnet rock….life was great.

 

Fastnet 2015

Following the success of our first fastnet campaign, interest in joining the team for 2015 was so high from within and potential new members that applications came in early and we were oversubscribed for the team. Many of the 2013 crew signed up for another campaign and we were joined by an able set of new team members that gelled together quickly.

We started the campaign with another pair of training weekends one of which was the most bitterly cold sailing experience of my life with snow falling on the deck of the boat as the ice cold wind penetrated through to the bone.

Our qualifying races this year were out to Le Havre, St Peter Port and St Malo again. 2015 was a warm year and phosphorescence and dolphins were common occurrences in our races and so was the lack of wind.

The Fastnet race itself was a generally light wind affair with the most enjoyable part being as we stealthily glided past other 40.7’s on our way out to the rock in a mirror calm sea keeping the boat moving where others had stalled and lost way.

The season ended well for us and we enjoyed celebrations at a bonus race to Cherbourg to end the racing year. Some of us enjoyed the celebrations more than others thank goodness Martin Hemming was on board to smooth things out with the local hostileries and two burly sailors on hand to lug a sozzled panda home.

 

Fastnet 2017

Sadly Ballistic had started to show her age in 2015 and was no longer available to HOEOCA for the 2017 season but thankfully this also coincided with a plan hatched back in 2013 by Chris Blackburn and yours truley to acquire a boat to undertake the race double handed in 2019.

Now with a smaller yacht, a Jeanneau 3200 called All Or Nothing (AON) the crew selection became even more difficult. We were again over subscribed, but with a training format now well established Chris and myself took on the next step up in our sailing development taking on the role of leading the HOEOCA Fastnet campaign.

The first race to Le Havre went well and AON achieved 7th in class from 35 entries. This spurned us onto higher expectations and created our first major failure in HOEOCA Fastnet history. A devastating Asymmetric wrap around the forestay in strong winds on the last leg to the south of the Isle of Wight resulted in our retirement from the race. We limped into Gosport marina under engine to detangle the remnants of the sail from the boat. It was without a doubt a major low point for everyone on the boat.

Lessons learned and with the benefit of boat ownership in the club, we had an additional race this season and we enjoyed two further successful races to Eddystone Lighthouse and St Malo, though with light winds in both races they were both long and without destination nights out.

The fastnet race this year again benefited from reasonably pleasant weather conditions, with a choppy close hauled beat to the rock to arrive in very warm sunshine and no wind. After rounding the rock in daylight new weather fronts kicked in which surfed us down the Irish sea, regularly racing at 12-14 knots for many hours.

We learned a lot that year both about boat handling, crew management and selection which no doubt will stand us in good stead for the future.

 

Fastnet 2019

We didn’t know it at the time but 2019 was a year of change. For the first time HOEOCA had two yachts taking part in the race. Chris and myself sailing double handed on AON and another full HOEOCA crew sailing with the support of a professional skipper on Dusty P, a Beneteau F40. Chris and I had raced double handed on AON in every RORC qualifying race in the previous year to hone our skills and had great success picking up the first prizes for HOEOCA in a number of races with JOG and RORC, including taking silverware by winning their class outright in the Channel race to Eddystone!

Both boats competed well in the qualifying races and despite an attempt by Tesco to ruin Dusty P’s chances in the Fastnet by sinking them in the marina with an overload of bananas, both boats set off well prepared for the race to the rock in August 2019.

The weather in 2019 was not to be as enjoyable as it had been for the three previous campaigns and a dreadfully tough beat to Lands End saw off many very experienced high calibre yachts with retirements. It’s testament to both boats and crew that they battled through this and up the irish sea. The weather continued to challenge the fleet up to and around the rock with rain and uncomfortable seas. The return ride to Plymouth gave no respite for the crews with heavy seas regularly breaking over the topsides drenching everything insight.

The final leg from the Scillies was a more comfortable ride and when AON joined the Dusty P crew in Plymouth the party got started. As we nursed our bruises and told stories of waves that threw fish onto our boats, we became aware that not only had we made HOEOCA history but indeed we may have been part of Fastnet history as stories circulated of a move from Plymouth to a Fastnet finish in France for 2021.

 

Fastnet 2021

Who knows what 2021 will bring for the next HOEOCA Fastnet crew. What I can say with confidence is, it will be an experience never forgotten, it will bind friendships and will bring pleasure and pain. If you’re looking to expand your sailing skills and join in a world renowned sailing experience that people fly around the world to take part in then our club is a great way to experience the thrills of a Fastnet campaign.