Wild Spirit Sailing

The famous Round the Island Race is on Saturday and Wild Spirit will be racing along with over 1500 other yachts. Superb spectacle and great fun but not one to take too seriously as half the competitors won't really know the rules.
After the race we have a couple of Mile builders then the Fastnet followed by a Mile building course out to the Scillies then back to Lymington

Till death us do part Pic of us on our way to winning the 3 Peaks Yacht Race last year.
I will miss the 3 Peaks Yacht Race this year due to a family wedding but some former Wild Spirits plus former team members from Juno in the Caribbean and Helsal 3 from Sydney Hobart will be racing. Start is Barmouth on saturday evening and you can follow progress via http://yb.tl/threepeaks2019... with details about the teams on www.threepeaksyachtrace.co.uk
Last year our mile building sailing was mainly in Scottish waters as we kept Wild Spirit in Troon before and after the race, this year our Mile builders are mainly cross channel or out to the Scillies
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Caribbean 600 race Paul is skippering Spirit of Juno (picture Juno a Farr65) again for the 2020 Caribbean 600. Details will appear on OnDeck Antigua site soon or you can register your interest with us. we sold out well before the race this year and had to turn people away. Looks like we already half full (13/6/19) so if you want a place do ask for now.
Training starts 0930 19th February and for 2020 we have managed to secure a berth alongside in the World Heritage Nelsons Doc...kyard. Race starts Monday 24th and you are safe to book a flight out from Saturday evening 29th.
If you want to try sailing with Paul before booking we will take you on a Mile builder or Race training weekend or September race at normal price (from £195) but give you £150 off the cost of the C600 (£1950) when you sign up for the team on Juno.
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Sunny Climes and Communications, June 13th, 2019
Dolphins, but I can’t remember where. I have senn hundreds of them, probably thousands but they still fascinate me. I can remember lying on the trampoline of a Catamaran crossing the Atlantic and looking plus listening to the dolphins less than a metre below me as they watched me and made noises. I remain convinced they were trying to communicate with me. From Sunday for 8 days i will be at sea, hopefully seeing more Dolphins a...nd definetly hard to communicate with. I will try and do brief replies to e-mails but not expecting much connectivity. Places for RYA courses, cross channel mile builders and mile building sailing are accurate as of 13th June so do drop me an e-mail and we can confirm the booking on 26th June before I set off for the Round the Island race with training starting 27th, this one is full as is the Fastnet but we do have places on other races and the race training weekends
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picture of Wild Spirit under just storm jib in a gale
We decided against racing in the Channel last weekend and trained in the Solent instead. We saw a gust of 47 Kts and several in the low 40s as we trained with various combinations of Storm and heavy weather sails before overnighting in Southampton. Of the fleet of 64 in the RORC race less than a quarter finished.
The cross channel mile builders are about half full and we have a few more enquiries. One question I am asked ...is 'Where will we go?' The answer is that the destination in the name of the trip is where I intend we should go and I have already looked at the tides. What I can't do is predict the weather in advance and, rather like last weekend, I have no intention of setting off on a RYA Mile building sailing course across the channel when a severe gale warning has been issued.
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Rumours that Wild Spirit and I may go our separate ways are true. From next December to about July 2020 I should be sailing slowly across the Pacific with Aussie Bruce and there seems little point in keeping a yacht in one of the most expensive marinas in the UK if I am not going to use it. This just part of the story, winning the 3 Peaks Yacht Race in 2018 was a pinnacle and from the top there is only one way. Having run Wild Spirit for 15 years I have made a lot of friends... and contacts in the sailing world so I am wondering if anyone has any sensible suggestions for a way forward that doesn’t involve never sailing on her again. There seem to be a few options. My company owns WS so I could sell the company so she remains Coded and with a berth in Lymington Yacht Haven (waiting list). I could go for a Yacht fraction scheme but have no real knowledge of how these work plus live 96 miles from Lymington. Finally I could just sell her via a broker and accept their 5% fees through gritted teeth. This last option doesn’t appeal so much as I suspect that her new Carbon sails, Dyform Rig etc will not be reflected in the valuation. I also have a website, about 14 sets of Oilies and many spares which I would have to through in at well under their value. We have run on a ‘Not for Profit’ basis for about 10 years as once, whilst also doing some consulting, I did make a profit and had to pay Tax. Since then, most years we have given at least £1K to charity, but it would be wrong to think you could make a sensible living running her out of Lymington Yacht Haven. Probably looking at October ---any sensible suggestions, do please drop me an e-mail at sail@wildspirit.co.uk
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https://www.sleepmonsters.com/races.php?a rticle_id=10241

4 Rescues in one trip We slipped from Plymouth on Thursday 17th August and in a blustery South westerly sailed the short distance to the Yealm River and overnighted there before running up to Dartmouth for the next night in a Westerly F6/7. After a good meal out and an early night we headed off to Guernsey and when about 20 miles off our first rescue arrived in the shape of a weary racing pigeon. After half an hour and having drunk some water, but refused Graham’s fruit cake,...
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A disappointing Fastnet but at least we didn’t end up with casualties or broken rigs. The prospect of having to beat into strong to near gale winds plus squalls for at least 12 hours together with not a particularly experienced team led us to retire by the Scillies and then return to Plymouth. 25 others also retired with at least 11 suffering damage attributed to the heavy weather. Others, like us, did not post a reason for retirement whilst 3 cited engine problems. The major...ity of those being forced to retire were around 40 feet and this reflects the luck that the fastest boats had with the weather systems which gave them much less beating as the North Westerlies arrived after they had rounded the Fastnet Rock. Possibly the unluckiest entrant was Harriet Marwood who had been berthed near us prior to the race, the team had come several hundred miles to do the race so it was really unfortunate for them to run aground on the Shingles. [This bank moves around so much that only the ends have regular chart updates]. In the 2015 Fastnet a US yacht also ran aground there, she was rather inappropriately called ‘Lucky’. We have a long established rivalry with Irish Offshore sailing and we had tacked to and fro against them for 2 hours before being ahead as we left the Needles, they managed to finish describing their trip up to the Fastnet as ‘trip up was very wet and squally’. In heavy weather it is often crews that fail before the boat and other friends ended up retiring into Irish Ports with a very experienced skipper citing ‘an attack of sleep monster induced fear of the boat falling to bits’. Whilst another e-mailed saying ‘We had 2 members that were imagining that the boat was breaking up. They pretty much convinced the others that the boat was delaminating and the keel was going to fall off. We had a pretty loud squeak on the port side which I could not understand as we had never had that before. I decided that we should retire and make our way to Cork to get the boat checked out, the 2 crew were imagining all sorts of things and at one time they told me the bow was just about to fall off and it was moving 100mm side to side! I assured them and the others that was not the case. They also wanted to do a Mayday and Pan Pan which I would not allow as I could hear there were plenty of other boats in a far worse situation. Anyway we got to Cork safe and sound and even had a lifeboat escort to our mooring had a full survey done on the boat which the surveyor `could find nothing wrong at all’. I then discovered our spinnaker halyard which we used when we done a headsail peel had a seized turning pulley on the deck which was where the creaking noise was coming from! Needless to say the 2 crew members got the plane back from Cork’. #rolexfastnetrace #rolexfastnetrace2017
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Fastnet---We retired from the Fastnet close to the Scilies. A difficult call but as several yachts suffered broken rigs and retired into Eire whilst beating into up to force 7 NW winds. (Force 7 –say 30 sustained knots equals 35 knots across the deck and a gale starts at 34 knots, then add gusts of up to 30% higher and a bit of wind against tide–a bit lumpy or as racing sailors might term it a BFL) Disappointing and some of our close rivals made it round unscathed but some di...dn’t including one whose skipper had completed his ‘ISAF’ course with Paul a week before the race.
Our start was good and we tacked to and for across our friendly rivals of Irish Offshore Sailing on Desert Star who won the Sea School trophy in the 2015 Fastnet and who we had beaten in the 2016 Volvo Round Ireland.By the time we were at the Needles we were ahead and with the rest of the fleet headed south making the best course we could against the WSW winds. Later with variable winds we continued to do well but a lot of tacks were required until the wind veered NW after a variable period as we approached the Lizard.
Normally crews break before boats and hours of being battered when beating uphill really do hurt. Given the weather forecast are only predictions a bitterly disappointing but justified decision to retire. Geoff’s decision as skipper but with Paul’s full support.
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Link for video should be https://www.wildspirit.co.uk/wp-co…/upl oads/foredeck-fun.mp4
Here we are doing over 20 knots

Fastnet starts on Sunday You can follow Wild Spirit on http://www.rolexfastnetrace.com/…/2017- fleet-tracking-race-… After the Fastnet we have a 10 day cruise and then 3 more races and acouple more RYA courses. Big race for next year is the Volvo Round Ireland--4 places left.
... We came across this video of Paul getting wet on the way to winning Lord Howe Island race in 2012
http://www.rolexfastnetrace.com/…/2017- fleet-tracking-race-…
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The Weymouth race saw a forecast of quite strong winds and because these would be against the tide it could be lumpy, just the sort of conditions we do well in and similar to last year when we finished 3rd The weather was milder than forecast and after a slightly slower start than hoped for we beat down the Solent and then down the Needles. One yacht some way behind us lost its’ mast but we continued under full main and No 3 tacking towards Anvil Point. To go outside the race... or use the inside passage, which is narrow at the best of times, was the next choice. We choose the inside and was rewarded on arrival by a line of foaming white water. Choosing the least boisterous looking bit we just ploughed through and gave the decks a wash. A simple broad reach in to the finish saw us overtake a couple of yachts to finish 5th in class. A little disappointing compared with last year but still comfortably in the top half. Next race is the Fastnet
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The RYA course from 11th to 16th July went well and with agreat crew we even had a spinnaker up on the first day as we ran from Lymington to Weymouth on the tide and a SE wind.Video on https://youtu.be/YawdW73FJH0 Lulworth range had stopped firing by the time we passed Anvil point so we sailed close into the World Heritage site Jurrassic Coast before arriving in Weymouth. The next day we sailed back to Poole then took in Studland, Yarmouth, Cowes and a total of 121 miles before arriving safely back in Lymington.

2018 sees us return to Wicklow for another Volvo Round Ireland and we may do the 3 Peaks Yacht Race before that on Wild Spirit as it is 3 weeks before the VRIR. I have some interest from regulars for using WS for a week or 2 either off Ireland or up to the Hebrides as it is quite short hop.