CRUISER NEWS JANUARY 2012

Alex Lochrane, the Chief Executive Officer of the Jubilee Sailing Trust gave us an illustrated talk about the work and the history of the JST on Saturday evening. Alex had been an officer in the Royal Navy for 25 years before swallowing the anchor. I think that I can speak for all of us who attended his talk, he was an inspirational character for whom one felt nothing was impossible. The JST is, I believe, fortunate to have such a leader. The JST takes a mix of able-bodied and disabled people of all ages cruising on their ships the Lord Nelson and Tenacious. For example, the JST is taking increasing numbers of servicemen injured in Iraq and Afghanistan on their voyages as part of their recovery process. On Friday last week, Tenacious met up in mid-Atlantic with the Row2Recovery rowing boat, crewed by 6 servicemen 4 of whom are disabled, rowing from La Gomera in the Canaries to Nelson's Dockyard in Antigua. Two of the crew of Row2Recovery had sailed with JST on Lord Nelson, so it was a very happy reunion in mid-ocean. Row2Recovery had had some serious technical problems with the loss of its watermaker, but the crew were determined to finish the course. The sea was too rough for Tenacious to launch a RIB and in any event providing assistance of any kind would have disqualified the rowing boat. Tenacious instead gave Row2Recovery a rousing Mexican wave! Alex is currently is conducting a feasibility study into taking one of the Trust's two ships on a circumnavigation. He explained that the legs of the voyages would necessarily be several weeks long, but he fully intends that both able-bodied and disabled people would crew these legs, in the usual way. This is a massive undertaking, but members of the International Sail Training Association from around the world have offered their support. Alex was planning that their ship would take part in the Brazilian, South African, Australian and New Zealand Sail Training programmes. The Omani Sail Training Association has invited the Trust to visit them as has the Indian Sail Training Association. I think that Alex might need to call upon his friends from the Royal Navy to provide an escort, before he can accept their invitations! Four knots is not a great speed at which to dodge Somali pirates! Once again Anthony laid on a splendid supper. I, for one, pigged out on the fish pie!

Lord Nelson and Tenacious

This brings us conveniently on to our next Supper and Illustrated talk on Saturday 18th February at 1900hrs by Commander Martin Ewence RN, an Itchenor Sailing Club member. Martin will be talking about his experiences with the NATO Counter-Piracy Squadron in the Somalia Basin. He has just been called to sea and is due back at the end of this month, so no doubt he will have the very latest information about the piracy situation. I have read in the Cruising Association Magazine that a group of brave or foolhardy yachtsmen are planning to sail through the area in the very near future. Rather them than me!

Menu
Indian curry with all the bits
Almond and Wild Berry Tart with a Vanilla Mascarpone

£14 per head (A vegetarian option will be available)
Please book in with the Office on 01243 512400

And finally on Saturday 17th March 2012 again at 1900hrs my crew and I will talk about Wotan's cruise to the Azores and back in 2011 via Brittany and North West Spain.
With Anthony, I will try to devise a suitably Azorean style menu for the supper! I promise you that it will not be salted cod (baccalao)!



Ant Fawcett
Rear Commodore Cruising

Last night some 30 members of the Itchenor SC Cruisers attended the Cruiser Christmas Dinner at the Club. Ras Turner gave us a splendid illustrated after dinner talk about the Whitbread 1973 Round the World Race on which he sailed as Bowman on the Royal Naval Yacht Adventure on the Sydney – Rio de Janeiro leg. We were very glad to be sitting in a warm room eating delicious food, while Ras told us about beating to windward through the furious 50s and the screaming 60s for three weeks. The oilskins and kit which they had was, by modern standards, very basic. They had three helicopter winchmen's suits, the precursors of our modern dry suits, which had to be swapped every watch. They lost their one diving mask, which they used to protect the helmsman from the freezing spray, when the helmsman got washed over the side. Fortunately he was recovered. It took them 5 hours to download and interpret the weather information, which they received over the radio in morse code! Navigation was by sextant.

Approaching Cape Horn they had not been able to fix their position for three days. They only had a position line from a single star sight to rely upon as they approached the Horn. He showed us a picture on an iceberg they encountered, which they christened Alderney because of its shape and size! Just to make matters simpler their steering wheel broke south of Cape Horn. They steered with the emergency tiller for several days until it was calm enough to strip the binnacle down and replace the broken shear pin. Since he was an engineer, the responsibility for the repair devolved on Ras! This repair took all day to complete. They were met by HMS Endurance off Cape Horn for a photo opportunity. Ras described Cape Horn as a rather watered down version of St Albans Head!

Once around the Horn and heading north the weather improved rapidly. There was a wonderful picture of Adventure sailing up the coast of Argentina under spinnaker, blooper and blue skies, with all the sails on deck to dry out, while the main was off being repaired below, and the crew looking very relaxed.

Anthony and his team laid on a truly wonderful dinner for us. Thank you!

2011 Cruiser Shakedown Rally

The Club Cruiser section shakedown rally....so what is that?   Well, some 15 years ago a group of like minded members decided to use the relatively uncrowded midweek time in early May to take their boats out and see if everything still works after the winter lay-up....and whilst doing that have a few meals and drinks to renew sailing friendships in various harbours around the area.

Over the years it has been organised by a number of people, David Rolph, Chris Plowman, Tony Anstee and this year it fell to Peter and Kim Henshaw to  put together a framework of destinations to which boats could come and go at will.  So with a good stash of bottles of wine we set off, carefully avoiding Friday 13^th by going the previous day, for Bembridge where 10 of us (and the dog) ate onboard Equinox before leaving early next day for Cowes where we had planned lunch on the RLYC balcony (kindly hosted by Peter Taylor wearing his rear commodore sailing hat at the Royal London YC).  We overnighted at the Folly and then made our way to Yarmouth, with a lunch stop in Newton Creek for some.  There we ate at ‘On the Rocks’ which was very jolly and noisy and the next day went over to Beaulieu where we celebrated Tony Anstee’s 70^th birthday and then dispersed the next day for home.

Now in between all this drinking and eating we did do some sailing...really.  Over the years we have had all kinds of weather at this time of year, even to the extent of one year being blown off completely.   This year however the weather gods were kind and we had good winds (frequently on the nose) and strong tides and everyone enjoyed a good sail between meals and by and large all the boats were in good shape after the winter, Oskar had a leak and Equinox’s tiller broke but nothing too alarming..

So we checked our boats in the calm of the Solent and had some fun, we enjoyed our local sailing area at a time when it was at its uncrowded best and with sun, fair wind and tides in our favour.

Boats taking part this year were St Anne d’Auray, Cosantes, Oskar, Holly Blue and Equinox.