Manny said...

I teamed up with the Dark Side for this years event, pairing up with HBT's Alec Keith, and sailing on the same yacht as last year, Meridian, a lovely cumfy racing cruisery type thing, Sigma 33-ish. That's as far as my technical sailing knowledge goes. Our agreement to "get round and have fun" worked quite well, with only the "fun" bit, disappearing in several places. Alec has been sporting an ankle injury for some time, and my SIPR training tapered from Stuc to nothing for 3 weeks, except a very bad chest infection and 2 dosed of anti-balistics from the quack!Undetered and in contrast to Chris & Damon we had a very sedate first 10k run round Oban wondering in mid-field in the untimed prologue and ejoyed the usual bedlam of the fleet fighting it's way out of Oban Bay. Good wind made for a steady, enjoyable sail to Salen before the nightmare comenced. As we arrived in Salen bay the wind whipped up, black clouds descended and cold rain started falling,making the paddle for shore a 50/50 risk of getting blown back into the Sound of Mull.Surviving this we heading off down the road into a wet head wind to get cold and tired early. The hill saw the rain stop and we were passing teams easily, 11 in total before the summit, we took a good line to the top(in 2hours) only getting passed by the eventual winners Phil Davies and Jonathon Whitaker. After the 3rd check point a loud bang and mushroom cloud was detected from Coire Nam Fuaran as Gorman exploded in devestating fashion.Leg & stomach cramps, massive outbreak of diarrhoea, and almost passing out on Loch Ba side led to me running about 3 miles back along the track/road without any recollection other than having a 5 minute conversation and arguement with an imaginary Alec, who had taken my pack then promptly dropped half a mile back as I ran/staggered away from him!We finally staggered, shattered, into Salen in 4hours 20min.It took a lot of time,food and drink to recover from that as we gently sailed back down the Sound of Mull heading for Jura throught the night.Our sleep was interupted by distress calls from the Good Ship HBT aka Gloria Mundi as she grounded on rocks and we supressed laughter as the calls for assistance to "Septre" were met with a dry "we draw 3metres, what do you draw..?" knowing full well it was a lot less than 3 metres - in other words (for the hard of sailing) "you are drowning, so *uck off" HBT's Phil Mowbrays account is as follows...."Having strolled round oban without breaking sweat, providing their crew with the opportunity to lead the fleet out of the harbour, the only true HBT assault on the boat race (at least according to the entry list) was abruptly scuttled on its approach to the sound of Luing at about 1:40 am on Saturday morning. The crew obviously decided that their lack of edge on the water was going to be shown up by the Trotter pair’s prowess over the ground, and hence decided to ‘do a klinsman’, by driving the boat into a lighthouse. This was a fairly extreme means of escaping their inadequacies, particularly as nightswimming in the water off the north end of jura in nothing but a pair of running shorts is quite a prospect with the boat keeled over at 60 degrees to the horizontal and the noise of the hull grinding against the rock reverberating around the cabin.After 30 mins of lurching about and not a small amount of FFS, the coastguard radio operator was still trying desperately to cover for her crew who had doubtless been bevvying in Oban for the last 12 hours. This was fortunate, for despite scenes reminiscent of The Poseidon Adventure, the boat was heaved off the rock by high tide, and the brave Trotters were able to argue vehemently to continue at all costs (a bit of duck-tape and some chewing gum will sort that you soft bastards). However, with gallons of water and associated detritus spraying in through the hole, the crew were forced to turn with their tails between their legs back to the nearest port and abject humiliation.As Jamie said, perhaps it could have been worse. And the boat had been very comfortable up until about 1:39am. Remind me to sleep somewhere near a lifejacket, clothes and contact lenses next time this happens."

tee hee

Anyway we had a brief encounter with a rock on the way into Craighouse giving our skipper a severe dose, but fortunately we managed to get off quickly as a bit of crunching!Alec and I had a really steady run round Jura (which was astonishing for me after the Mull trauma) and the weather was just beautiful. We both enjoyed every minute and managed to pass another 7 teams in the process. The tough climbs and mad dangerous descents were great fun and I was sorry it was over in about 4hours 10mins.The Grim Reaper returned to me in the form of seasickness as we tacked our way very slowly up and eventually round the Mull of Kintyre, in what we thought were heavy seas but our crew assured us it was nothing!With virtually nothing to eat or drink for our 20 hour passage, I was using the final hour of flat calm sailing/rowing into Lamlash to cram in banana rolls and Complan drinks, as incredibly 8 yachts creeped neck-in-neck for the slip to get their runners off first. It was an amazing sight and lots of nervous twitching as the runner were deployed into dinghy for the final sprint for shore.Needless to say the Westies/HBT pairing stuffed the lot of them gaining a vital one second advantage for the final run to Goatfell.It was a great sight to see so many marshals and runners in complete mayhem at the kit check stage, all at the one time with words of encouragement from the Christines Menhennett and Paterson.We set of cautiously, fearing the worst of 18 miles on the back of a sleepless, spewing night on the boat, but we held a respectable pace over the 6 miles to the foot of the hill, before I started to struggle again. This time I eased off the pace a bit to avoid exploding on the hill and we we made good progress walking and jogging up the hill in time to see Davis/Whitaker flowing back off the summit in great form (to finish in an increble 3.09 claiming King of the Bens title!)We turned back and surprised ourselves with a fast run back through the meandering tourists in Brodick and hordes of Ramblers on Prospect Hill.A final "sprint" to the slip, we finished in 3 hours 35 mins giving us maybe 4th or 5th overall in the running competition, and I think maybe about 13th in the fleet positions at Troon and a well earned beer with our fantastic, hard working knackered crew.An event of very mixed blessing this year, but there's something special about it that will draw me back next year I hope.

Wednesday 25th May 2005 2.44pm