Round the Island Race - 2019
Sometime in March I received an email saying “Congratulations, you have been nominated for the Round the Island Race”. It felt like a scene from one of the Mission Impossible movies where the voiceover starts with ‘..your mission, should you choose to accept it.. ‘ and ends with ‘.. this message will self-destruct in five seconds. Five, four, three.. ‘. I quickly replied to the email confirming that I would sign up for it without having the slightest clue what was in store for me.
A bit of reading up revealed some very interesting bits of information. Organised by the Island Sailing Club, the race is one of the largest sailing events around the world. Some 1500 boats being steered by 15000 participants that attempt to sail around the Isle of Wight covering a distance of 50 nautical miles (93 kilometers for me and you) on the last Saturday of June. This was going to be exciting!
Fast forward three months later to Thursday 28th of June - Adrian Newell, Emma Goodyear, Ciaran Findlay, Dan Clearwater and I are off to Portsmouth where we meet the rest of the J P Morgan contingent the following morning and set off for the Isle of Wight. The dinner in Portsmouth revealed that five of us were great deipnosophists (a person skilled at table talk) as the stories of our travels and adventures were shared around the table.
Following morning on Friday 29th of June, we were joined by colleagues from London, Bournemouth, Glasgow, Warsaw, Madrid and New York and allocated our respective boats. The crew on each boat was made up of 12 J P Morgan employees alongside 3 professional sailors and the agenda for the day was to get trained up for the big race on Saturday. Walking towards the boats and seeing them for the first time I knew instantly that these were serious machines. I learnt that the boats had already sailed around the world once before and were made to handle the toughest oceanic conditions one can imagine.
We set off from Gunwharf Quays, life-jackets on and having received a safety briefing on how not to get our fingers chopped off by all the ropes, winches and grinders on the boat. Part of the training was also about getting familiar with sailing terminology. It’s not “the right side of the boat” it’s “starboard”, it’s not the “steering wheel” it’s called a “helm”! The training went smooth as we all slowly started to understand how the boat worked and what the race would entail.
Friday evening, the entire J P Morgan contingent and the professional crews were hosted by the Island Sailing Club for a dinner and an auction raising funds for the Ellen MacArthur Cancer Trust. An auctioneer with a great sense of humour helped raise around ￡3,500 in exchange for everything from books signed by Sir Robin Knox Johnston (first man to sail around the world solo) to weeklong sailing courses. The night was wrapped up early as all the crews were keen to get back to the boats, where we spent the night, for an early 6am start on race day.
The race was flagged off at 7:30am sharp, our sails were up, we had a light breeze, the boat’s engines were off and we were sailing along the tide. The sight of 100s of boats all around us with their spinnakers up and filled in by the wind, coupled with the periodic sound of water splashing gently across the hull, and the morning sun was just pristine. By the time we reached the most scenic part of the race, crossing the ‘needles’ of the Isle of Wight, the wind had died down and we had slowed down as a result. Some of the J P Morgan boats had crossed the needles already, but were in the same boat (not literally!) and had slowed down too. We pushed along for a couple of hours with a slow pace and some very good chat amongst the crew to keep our spirits up. Once we crossed the needles and ventured more towards the open sea, the wind picked up and this was going to be the most exciting part of the race - our boat was sailing (almost) sideways. We tacked (changed the tilt of the boat) from left to right, correction - from portside to starboard and back several times forming a zig-zag route as we sailed ahead. We started tracking the progress of all the J P Morgan boats on the GPS and started analysing all the different strategies the boats were taking. Some had ventured far out to the sea, some were by the shore, some were tacking every few minutes forming smaller zig-zag routes some were larger zig-zags. We did not realise where most of the day went whilst being busy on the boats, pulling on the ropes and ensuring the sails were angled just right.
It took us almost eleven hours to get to the two-thirds mark on the race and at this point a decision had to be made. We were either going to push ahead with our engines off and finish the race at around 11pm that night or turn the engines on, call in a retirement and get to the pub a couple of hours earlier. Of course we chose the latter. Once at the marina, after a much needed shower we met our colleagues from all the other boats and shared stories of how fast we were going and how we were almost sideways!
We got back to the boats later that night and went to bed in our bunkers, this time quite a bit more tired than the previous night. Next morning we had charted an even paced sail back to Portsmouth and our flights back home.
It was an incredible weekend and has left me with a very compelling desire of getting back on a boat some time soon again. As I got on the plane at Southampton airport I realised that seat was not on the left side of the plane, it was on the “port side” side of the plane. And as we landed in Edinburgh, I realised that this weekend has changed the way I look at boats that are moored along the coastline of any city by the water.