With a crew of twelve for this race we knew it was going to be a tight squeeze. The race started from the Royal Yacht Squadron line at 0810 but we were a premature starter which meant we had a lot of work to do from the beginning. It was a beat in a force 2-3 through the Forts to the Nab Tower, by which time we had made it through to 3rd in class on the water. It was then a long spinnaker reach to Needles Fairway, but that eventually changed into a beat as we sailed through a bank of thick fog with 50 yards visibility, at which time lifejackets went on. We got to Needles Fairway at about 3pm, leading our class on the water -- now all we had to do was to stretch the lead into a winning position on corrected time.

The next leg was back along the south side of the Isle of Wight to a buoy called Owers, after leaving it to port we were headed to Saltdean, just off Brighton. With the wind dying, and three spinnaker changes later, we finally rounded it at about 1am on Sunday morning. A very frustrating couple of hours were spent 'parked' off Brighton with absolutely no wind, but fortunately we were drifting with the tide in the right direction! The breeze filled in again at about 5am, bringing us on the wind with some boat speed. The wind then died again but then filled in from the south east, allowing us to fly our 'floater' spinnaker, but unfortunately by this time a J109 had caught us up which we needed to lose. We were now heading to Rustington off Littlehampton and managed to pull away from the J109 a bit. Moral was a little low so after hunting around I was able to cook a good meal which raised spirits no end. The next buoy was back to Owers, and then Warner before re-entering the Solent to finish off Gilkicker point, with no more food on the boat other than biscuits! We eventually finished at 1422, with just over 30 hours of hard racing behind us, but having learnt a lot ready for the Fastnet.

The crew were dropped off at Cowes, before Jim and Jules took Flair back to Poole.

The Myth of Malham gave us our second 2nd place in IRC 2, and we were pleased to finish 3rd overall out of the 59 starters.

The next qualifier is Cowes to St. Malo, a course of approximately 160 miles (and then back again) starting on Friday 4th of July, before the Fastnet Ract itself, starting on August 10th.

We shall keep you posted on our progress!