London Corinthian SC at West Lancashire YC in 2006 for the Southport 24 hour race.

An Enduring Enterprise – the Southport 24 hour race 2006.

 

Saturday 9th and Sunday 10th September 2006.

London Corinthian achieved one of its better results in this year’s 24 hour endurance race held at Southport on the Lancashire coast. A team of eight Corinthians entered the club boat Independent in this Le Mans style endurance race amongst a race fleet of 65. The race started midday on Saturday 9 September with the aim of completing as many laps as possible of the triangular course in 24 hours. LCSC was placed mid table by the end of the race, despite penalties that dropped us back a few places.

Milder weather conditions contributed to a much more compact race fleet this year with only a few laps separating the race leaders from the bulk of the fleet. The LCSC team completed 78 laps of the 1¼ mile course in the 24 hour period – only six laps behind the winner.

The Rear Commodore, Jeremy Whiting, with Jenny Drife crewing, started the race and soon established a cracking pace of 13 minutes per lap, moving us rapidly up the ranking tables. In the brisk conditions Jeremy and Jenny got the boat planing on its own bow wave in the downwind part of the course. At the first crew change three hours into the race Catherine Baudinette and Kerstin Exner, took over and maintained the momentum, even though this was Catherine’s first experience of the Southport course.

Meanwhile Jeremy Whiting took a break from the race to enjoy the canapés and cocktails at the Commodores drinks party. The rest of the team settled down to more typical Lancashire fare of ale, pies and chips in the beer tent. Retiring to the bar for a few more drinks to mentally prepare for their turn on the boat the Corinthian crews took heart from the LCSC winners plaque prominently displayed above the bar commerating our 1986 victory in this race.

With the wind easing by late afternoon, next in the boat were Tom Ball and Dominika Dykiert, also in their first Southport race, who sailed into the hours of darkness. The clear sky, full moon and starlight, together with the glare of the Blackpool illuminations, meant that in the wee small hours there weren’t too many near misses or cases of “things that go bump in the night”. Though some of the local wildfowl attempting to swim back to their nests on the islands in the middle of lake had some narrow escapes from being run down by the race fleet.

Jeremy Clarke, with Kerstin Exner crewing, kept the boat going until after midnight before handing over to Catherine the helm with Dominika. Then Jeremy and Jenny for their second shift, Nick Wilson replacing Jenny to see out the last of the hours of darkness. As dawn broke over the lake, the updated results from race control showed the Corinthian team at their highest rankings, which we duly celebrated with a full cooked breakfast.

This extra ballast taken on in the greasy spoon proved a tactical success when the wind started to pick up again over the morning. The wind fluctuated between North East and South East over the 24 hours creating a course with plenty of close reaching, but with some tricky wind shifts. The absence of a significant long downwind leg reduced the advantage of the spinnaker boats, and played to the strengths of the Enterprises with their large mainsails.

Catherine Baudinette and Dominika Dykiert were back in the boat mid morning to compete in the Heiniken Cup awarded for the fastest boat (lady helm and crew) after 10am.


It fell to Tom and Kerstin to see the Corinthian team home for the final laps of the race to the midday finish gun. At the final gybe mark Tom and Kerstin suffered the team’s only capsize of the race. All was not lost however, as they quickly righted the boat and more importantly managed to retrieve the supply of ships biscuits before they floated away to feed the local wildfowl.

The 24 hour race is a comprehensive test of sailing and racing skills for any sailor, and will be held next year on 15-16 September 2007.



Full results are available at http://24-hour-race.wlyc.org.uk/


by Jeremy Clarke

The 2006 team:

Copyright © London Corinthian Sailing Club, 18 Sept 2006