THE FASTNET Race is no joke. When I told a colleague I was about to embark on it, he passed me his copy of K. Adlard Coles’s Heavy Weather Sailing. “This book saved my life,” he said.
After cheerfully describing his own near-death experience at sea, he urged me to read Adlard Coles’s account of the gale-racked 1979 race, in which fifteen crew died, five yachts sank and nineteen were abandoned. The Fastnet, I soon learnt, has “a reputation for bad weather”.
Suitably apprehensive, and equipped with little more than a spoon, a toothbrush, a knife and a torch, I am joining 15 other women to compete in that same race, 635 miles from Cowes to the Fastnet Rock, southwest of Ireland, and back to Plymouth.
The 16 of us assembled for the first time six weeks ago at a sea-survival course in Lymington. Fully dressed in oilskins, lifejackets and boots, we each had to step into a swimming-pool. It wasn’t quite the same as capsizing in the Irish Sea, but it was a start.
Now the “swimming-pool adventurers”, as one armchair admiral dubbed us, are about to compete in the Grand National of ocean racing.
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“It will be a challenge,” says Christina Dinsmore, 40, whose notion it was to assemble the all-women crew. Most of us are mothers from Lymington, and we are sailing to raise cash for a children’s hospice near Winchester.
Dinsmore, a Canadian who came to Britain in 1989, knows how tough the biennial race is. She sailed it two years ago with her husband Dennis. They finished top of the British boats and fifth overall in Formula 1. And yes, she was seasick and was forced to retire to her bunk for 12 hours, but she loved it.
This year our aims are just as high, but the test will be tougher. “It’s quite something to deal with 15 other women,” Dinsmore says. And we are an eclectic bunch: a Canadian who flies helicopters and teaches blind people to ski; a librarian; a vet; a garden designer; a doctor; a special-needs teacher; a law student and her mother. Our ages range from 20 to 45.
“The perception is that all girls can’t do this kind of thing: it will be a personal challenge for all of us,” Dinsmore says.
We will be sailing Chernikeef, a gleaming 50ft Farr- designed racing machine owned by Peter Harrison, the British challenger for the Admiral’s Cup and founder of the GBR Challenge round-the-world race. Our skippers, Lorna Graham and Jo Burchell, hold the record for the Fastnet double-handed. Graham was also nominated for “offshore yachtsman of the year” in the 2001 British Nautical Awards.
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She and Burchell, a sculptor most often seen with her black labrador Jellybean in tow, have been doing their best to train us for the ordeal. They have spent their weekends and the occasional evening in Lymington and on the Solent trying to forge us into a crew strong enough to change spinnakers the size of tennis courts, bend over coffee-grinder winches for hours at a time, and haul ourselves up the mast.
Since the rules of ocean racing oblige us to have 300 miles of sailing under our belts we have just endured our first proper outing.
We set off at 9.30am into pouring rain with Force 6 forecasted. Our excitement at finally doing some proper sailing overcame any nerves, and we laughed off the fact that the newly installed loo was not working, only one hob of the stove would light and just about the only place to sleep was on bags of wet sails.
“Not quite luxury living is it?” said Emma Bateman, cheerily, as she mopped out the lockers.
At 6pm it was still raining. The dampness was seeping through everything. Dinsmore had succumbed to her dreaded seasickness, though without leaving her post at the mainsheet. Sailors say the worst thing about seasickness is thinking you’re about to die but knowing you won’t. “In my head, I quit about ten times,” she confessed later.
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We savoured our homemade lamb stew in dog bowls — during the race proper we will subsist on rehydrated veg curry and chilli con carne. I must admit the dried rice pudding fills me with dread. This food is designed to give us 3,000 calories a day without peaks or troughs in energy levels. And no Mars Bars either.
A similar minimalism rules our wardrobes. Toiletries are communal, so toothbrushes are allowed but not much else. Even knickers are rationed.
By the end of the first day we had made eight sail changes and the remorseless exertion of winching, grinding and hauling on halyards hour after hour was taking its toll.
Nor, as the clouds darkened, was there much prospect of sleep. Since we are at least 30 stone lighter than an all-male crew, the skippers need our all weight on the windward side to balance the power of the wind in our sails. If we are lucky we may snatch the odd doze now and again.
“It’s the dilemma,” says Dinsmore, “of finding that balance between getting round the Rock and having the stamina to do it well.”
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My own stamina has spent much of the past weeks in the tender care of my aptly named personal trainer, John Valiant. Thanks to rowing machines, weights and dumb-bells I now have some distinctly unfeminine biceps. He reminds me after each gruelling 40-minute session that this is what I have to look forward to for four days — if I am lucky.
The second day of our first cruise brought sunshine but most of us could barely speak for exhaustion as we snoozed on the rail. “I gave up ocean racing five years ago,” said Ronnie Belfitt, “and now I remember why.”
Our aim, of course, is to win. Chernikeef won in her class last year with a crew of 16 men. But we are also doing this in the name of Naomi House, a children’s hospice in Sutton Scotney, outside Winchester. It provides respite and palliative care for terminally ill children and their families.
Personally, I will be challenged by the rice pudding, but whatever the outcome, we will take inspiration from the words of that great sailor, Pete Goss: “Life hangs on a very thin thread and the cancer of time is complacency,” he said. “If you are going to do something, do it now. Tomorrow is too late.”