One Girls Ocean Challenge

May 2, 2013

The UK Solent Race starts on Sunday May 5, 2013.

This will be a 290 mile race, double handed, through the Solent and out to Plymouth.  Yet another epic navigation race!  The tides in the Solent are famous.  They squeeze massive amounts of water around the Isle of Wight sometimes at a rate upwards of four knots!  Plus there are all the rocks, traffic and local wind effects that we all know and love so much!  This is where the famous Cowes Week and RORC Rolex Fastnet Race all live and breath.

Our course starts in Lymington.  With a lap around the isle of White we’ll head up through the Solent to the East and around No Man’s Land, a fort built in the late 1860s to protect Portsmouth at a small cost of about a half million pounds.  Then it’s off to my friend The Needles!  I should be able to see it this time in the daylight hopefully.  Then it’s out to the English Channel to Wolfe Rock

where we make the big turn back up to Plymouth to finish the race.

This course may only have 11 boats registered, but the competition is going to be fierce.  Almost everyone, with the exception of a couple of French boats, is a local.  Born, bred and raised here, they cut their teeth on these tides and banks.

To keep up with all the fun and festivities, follow the race with the boat trackers.  The trackers will come online probably the night before the race starts, but here’s the link.

Here’s the motley crew you’re all becoming familiar with.

Andrew my co-skipper is on the left and then myself.  Katrina is holding strong next to me with her blue jumper on as she has lost her blue hat and is still waiting for her replacement blue hat to come.  Then we have Nikki on the right anxiously waiting for the picture to be taken so she can get up her mast and sort out a few “wiring issues”.  We’re almost ready to go!

Diane