Racing on “Charm III” Sat Apr 18,09

Saturday, April 18th, 2009

Had a great day racing on board the Charm III captained by Richard West. We actually beat the one
schooner the skipper was most anxious to beat which was the Astor.

I have never been in a sailing race before so this was an interesting day.
The schooner Charm III is a staysail schooner, this means that instead of a gaff rigged foresil she has a
staysail on a boom. Above this she carries a Fisherman’s Staysail. The advantage of this rig is that it is
essentially self tending in tacks and is supposed to be marginally faster upwind. This schooner was
designed and built in 1923 so she is a bit older than the Picton Castle actually. She has the distinction of
having the oldest masts still afloat on their original hull :-)

She sails really well and ha a very friendly and fairly laid back crew. Which was good cause I’m not sure I
was all that useful a hand. Shackle and Sarah and I were the Picton Castle crew that were aboard for
today’s race.

We headed for the starting line about 9:30 this morning. We got the sails and lines sorted and ten tacked
back and forth waiting for our class to start.

One of the schooners in our class is called “When and If” I believe. Her owner planned to sail her around
the world when and if he had chance. He died before he could do it. His name was George Patton.
We crossed the starting line bang on time which was met with much rejoicing. This is not an easy thing to
do apparently.

The race was on a course that had two downwind legs and a couple of up wind slogs, very cool, lots of
room for tactical sailing.

On one of the downwind legs we set a massive sail called a “Gollywobbler” that fills the space between
the fore and main and is used as a downwind sail like a spinnaker. Setting this monster is quite a process.
We first had to douse the Fisherman, un shackle and stow it, then set the Golly and take in the staysail.
When we rounded the buoy we had to do the opposite.

During the race the giant “J” Class boats roared by. They sail like giant fish more than boats. They are
very impressive and they create quite a wind shadow as they go.

Watching all these classic yachts, gaff riggers, schooners of all sizes all churning along in the beautiful
tropical blue seas was wonderful.

The last leg is upwind and here the tactics get tricky. Our skipper elected to do a bunch of short tacks
really close to shore and this made all the difference. Although we got very close to shore at one point.

Once the race was done we motored into the dock and stowed away the sails. A couple of Gin and Tonics
to celebrate our victory and a nice lamb dinner prepared by one of the crew ended a fabulous day.

Thanks for reading.
KJ

There are some photos of the race here.

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