SCENE 1; The Ballroom at the Polygon Hotel, Southampton, on the eve of the Fairplay Cup 1998. Perhaps it was the record number of entries in this year’s Fairplay Cup that subdued the assembly. Perhaps it was the formality of the surroundings, now that the group was too large to fit in the cosy bar of previous years. Or perhaps it was because no-one had yet discovered the free bar located just to one side of the room.
"There are more tickets here than you can shake a stick at," marvelled one crewman, surveying the gathering over his beer. But the only thing being shaken was Tor-Christian Mathiesen’s felt tip pen as he gave his now customary pre-race briefing. Some took more notice of his comments than others: There were those in the front row who had brought their own charts and later huddled in a corner to discuss tactics. Others gathered at the whiteboard, as though the very proximity of T-C’s recent scribblings would enhance their thinking.
The rest had latched onto T-C’s closing remark, at the end of a complicated discussion about tides and air masses: "There should be some wind." It was enough to earn T-C enthusiastic applause. It was exactly what he had said last year, when the race was dominated by reefs and rain. The weather in the run-up to this year’s event had been no better, so was the 1998 event to be another battle against the elements?
Scene 2; The next morning, Hamble. Clearly not. There was a breeze, yes. And the sky was grey. But it was a breeze that urged action, not acquiescence, and each crew went to its boat with victory as the only goal. There were last year’s winners, Denholm, back to try for the double. They had won at their first attempt, and this year’s newcomers - Castrol, Henderson Boyd Jackson, Litton, Shell, Sinclair Roche and Temperley, StenTex and Totem Plus - all believed they could match the achievement. Totem, in fact, were already thinking ahead. Like America’s Cup, they suggested, the race should be held in the home waters of the previous winner. As drizzle started to fall at lunchtime, the prospect of holding next year’s event in Israel grew strangely attractive.
Then there were those who had seen it all before. DNV, Unitor and Inchcape have competed in all three previous Fairplay Cups, yet have never been among the trophies. Dataworks had returned to make amends for its contretemps last year, when it sailed into Denholm and out of the race, while Fairplay and Fairplay Solutions were there just to show how it should be done.
Scene 3; The shake-down cruise. Fortunately, each boat was piloted by its owner, who really did know how it should be done and they set about judging their guest’s strengths and weaknesses. But they had been briefed to play as small a role as possible in handling the boat and there was praise afterwards for their approach. "He asked us what we wanted from the day, and I said we were very competitive," said one of Shell’s crew, while Litton found their host had "a good set of vocal chords." But it was their guests who were in charge, none more so than the well organised Denholm crew, who identified not only their skipper but also their ‘crew manager’ among their number.
So the lunchtime break was spent on some boats discussing strategy and allocating tasks. Sinclair Roche and Temperley clearly felt that lunch is for wimps, and spent the time practising manoeuvres. Others, however, were not so assiduous. Despite Shell’s keenness, lunch on their boat, called Shell Shocked, was enjoyed too much, making them late at the start. But not last: That honour went to Fairplay Solutions, whose boat, Prime Movers, was still at its lunchtime mooring even as the ten-minute gun fired for the race itself.
Scene 4; The Start, off Cowes. Those who were there, tell a tale of mayhem as 11 boats fought for position at a confusing start. One boat was sure it heard three guns as their watches counted to zero and expected to see the committee boat manoeuvring astern. Denholm had no such confusion. "We just sailed down the start line, hardened up on starboard and crossed line almost on the gun," they recalled later. The operative word there is ‘almost’, with Litton sure that their rivals had crossed early. But, with no recall from the committee boat and the Cool Carriers trophy for the first boat legally across the start line to take home with them at the end of the day, further discussion is futile. Whether Litton or Inchcape were next across the start was difficult to tell from the committee boat.
But why were there only 11 boats at the start? Shell and Fairplay Solutions, we know, were finishing their lunches, but Henderson Boyd Jackson had other problems. A batten broke and the owner’s son was sent up the mast to sort out the problem, making them seven minutes late across the line. Yet, by the first mark, they had taken the lead.
For the first time this year, the Fairplay Cup was raced as a handicap event and, in the draw for boats the night before, HBJ had picked a 13.4 m purpose-built racing machine, which gave them seven-league boots compared with the Sigma 38s that most of the rest of the fleet were operating. By the same token, it became inevitable that HBJ would be first across the finishing line, but whether they would emerge the race winners on adjusted time was something no one would know until much later.
It was a tough first leg as the fleet tacked against the fast tide - a new experience for the Totem crew - to the first mark. Was it just coincidence that the two oil companies in the race - Shell and Castrol - should have a close encounter on this leg? As Shell recalls the incident, the two boats were tacking close to the shore when Shell had to go about to avoid Castrol, on starboard tack. "They put us on the beach," said one of Shell’s crew in the bar later, over-dramatising the incident in the way that sailors do.
It was the tide that made rounding the mark the most nerve-wracking moment of the race.It was here that StenTex collected its green ‘go-faster stripe’ because, said the helmsman at the time, the buoy "was difficult to see when hidden by a sail and the crew were keeping a keen lookout into the bottoms of their coffee mugs."
Scene 5; The spinnaker leg. "We had the spinnaker in the water and everywhere," was how one of DNV’s crew recalled their experience. And they were not alone. As is so often the case, an ability to fly a spinnaker proved crucial in this race. "HBJ dumped their spinnaker," confided one rival, a point that the HBJ crew themselves were reluctant to discuss. "Nothing happened," was their initial response to enquiries, but eventually conceded that "there was a misunderstanding" that "might have lost us a moment."
Shell had theirs upside down at first, but cited the fact that only their skipper had used a spinnaker before mitigation. Dataworks commented how fortunate they were "to have several skippers on board," a point that was evident when one ‘skipper’ called for the spinnaker to go up and another immediately countered with a yelled "not yet!" Their log does not support the view of another competitor who reported seeing Dataworks make a terrible job of taking their kite down again at the end of the leg.
But Litton had the most frustration over a spinnaker. They enjoyed a hard fought race against Denholm, determined to wrest the trophy from them and cited as a highlight of the day being ahead of them at the first mark. But a confusion over the spinnaker sheets gave them problems on a gybe, and they lost valuable ground that they never fully recovered.
StenTex, too, clearly had problems. Among the things that its crew learned from the day was that "gybing the spinnaker can lead to blowing out one of the panels."
Scene 6; The race for the line. Unitor had problems with another sail when their genoa tore. "We weren’t doing anything that should blow it," believed one crewmember, but the 5 m tear was evidence that something was over stressed. "We lost boat speed big time and it lost us the race," he said.
Sinclair Roche and Temperley had been thoroughly overtaken by Fairplay’s 44 ft racing machine, which was flying a huge spinnaker. "Unfortunately," notes SRT’s log, "Fairplay grossly overstood the next mark and we were obliged to show her our transom for the remainder of the race." Fairplay made excuses later, muttering something about their "challenging vessel."
By now the fleet had split into two main groups, and Totem were shadowing DNV in the leading group, but eventually "we overtook them to windward and opened up a gap," Totem’s skipper said. And even DNV had to admit that "Totem made a smart move and took our wind. We never caught up." Totem eventually crossed the line fourth, and hoped for third or even second place on handicap. Whether DNV’s attention was distracted by the number of phone calls that its crew made and received is not clear. One guest successfully took part in a conference call and fixed a charter for a chemical tanker during the race.
Denholm, who crossed the line second but were the winners on handicap, credited their success in fending off Litton’s challenge to "more precise navigation,"
Dataworks, keen not to finish this year without some drama, caught a rope in their propeller after the finish "which required a rescue call to neighbouring boats to obtain a tow up the Hamble." It was StenTex that obliged, and they wished they could have borrowed a legal eagle from one of the other boats. Had they done so, "we would have known that it should have been our rope that we offered. Next time we hope a copy of Lloyd’s Open Form will be included in the briefing notes."
Fairplay Solutions, meanwhile, was still somewhere out on the course. Although their boat was a regular winner for its owner, the Solutions crew were too busy rescuing their lost lifebelt - an action for which they later won DNV’s safe sailing award - to get the best from it. Retirement became the only way to avoid the embarrassment of last place.
Scene 7; The prizes. But had they known that last year’s winners, Denholm, were going to pop out of the woodwork with a prize for the last boat - a bottle of Denholm’s own whisky - Solutions might have persevered just a little longer. Instead, it was Castrol that was able to drown its sorrows. Shell also had a prize to offer: an elegant knot display case for "the crew that tied itself in knots." With its impressively torn sail, Unitor was the obvious choice.
But it was Denholm’s night. Henderson Boyd Jackson were first across the line, but on corrected time they were ranked sixth, just one second ahead of Dataworks. Totem Plus ended up in third place, behind Litton, who just failed to achieve their goal of displacing Denholm. So the cut glass bowl that is the Fairplay Cup again went to Scotland, along with the Cool Carriers award for being the first boat legally across the start line. And they also received a memento of their win in 1997 - a glass yacht, which skipper Alan Armstrong immediately dropped on the floor. A sign, surely, that their grip on the trophy itself is not as firm as it seems.
Denholm’s win, said Alan, was a joint effort between Denholm Shipping Services and Denholm Ship Management. But their guests played no small part in their victory, and Alan credited Stuart Munro of ITIC as being an "extremely efficient crew director."
And what were the high points of the day? StenTex learnt that shiny and expensive winch handles do not float. Others discovered which way up to hang a spinnaker. One or two did not learn which way up their race pennant should be hoisted. A number of guests commented on how groups of individuals at the start of the day had become teams by the end of it. And for one guest on the Unitor boat, the highlights were "starting, opening the first beer and finishing. The whole thing, really."