A little tacky: Cowes Week Regatta in the Isle of Wight

Yachting For People Who Are Too Cowardly To Do It
by Paul Oswell

“Get ready to tack!”

I only went along to catch up with a friend. A nice, serene afternoon watching or - at the most - passively experiencing some yachting, the only challenge being to keep the ice in my gin and tonic from melting on a warm summer’s day. My friend had been invited as a guest of one tourist board, I by another, but I assumed we’d all be in the same boat. Or rather, all looking at the same boats while keeping half an eye out for the canapés.

I arrived at the Cowes Week annual regatta to find out that our respective hosts had very different ideas about how we were going to be spending our day. I waved at my friend sheepishly, shrugging my shoulders as our group was lead away from hers, away from the hospitality tents and down to the marina.  She waved back, or perhaps she was waving down a waiter. God, I could kill a couple of puffed pastry hors d'oeuvres.

“Get ready to tack!”

It’s 11am, six hours after getting up for a shockingly early train and I’m on a vessel that doesn’t look too much like it’s built for pleasure. It’s sleek, mean-looking and minibar-free. Much to everyone’s surprise, mine very much included, we are going to be in one of the competitions. 

These are the words being calmly delivered by Simon, our skipper: “I want to stress this: I will break this boat before I let any of you break your bodies. Your safety is of paramount importance.” 

As recently as 30 minutes earlier, in the heady, halcyon times before life jackets and safety briefings, the day still seemed unthreatening. I hadn’t considered any breakages. I’d imagined a relaxed, intact afternoon, where passengers (sorry, ‘crew’) and vessel arrived back in the marina pretty much as they’d left it. A little more tanned and full of cocktails, but generally in one piece. Identifiable without having to resort to dental records. You know, the basics.

Simon gives us the lowdown on how a 40ft yacht works. Out of the ten of us, three are professional crew members, one person has "done a bit of sailing”, and the rest of us are there for the aperitifs. If you’ve never been on a yacht built for competitive racing, let me explain the controls in great detail: there is a very complicated, intricate mess of ropes and winches, all of which are incredibly important.

We are each given specific tasks. The salty seadogs are assigned the more technical jobs, while us landlubbers are separated into what Simon calls “the Beefy Boys” (a couple of stocky, strong-looking guys who would work what I will call ‘the big sail’) and “the Rest Of You”, said with barely-disguised disgust to me and three slightly-built women.

My group is assigned the job of moving the smaller ‘headsail’ at the front of the boat, via ropes and winches at, naturally, the back of the boat. The instructions are given rapidly, and because nothing on a boat is called what it is called on normal, natural, dry land (a rope is a ‘sheet’, the toilet is the ‘head’, etc), I don’t take much of it in.

I think Simon notices. “I’ll just go over that again, quickly, Paul, so you get it this time.” Simon is showing remedial signs of exasperation. We had yet to move. “Try and focus, OK? It's very straightforward. When the peppercorn is jamboxed, I’ll shout at you to start pampering the clodhoppers, and when you feel the hootenanny go completely vague, then start misting the codpiece as fast as you can. Alright?”

Alright, Simon. 

Well, not really, I don’t understand much besides the prepositions, but I'm almost positive I’ve got the gist. Is ‘the gist’ part of a boat? It sounds like a boat word. Wait, I've forgotten the middle bit. However, I was safe in the knowledge that Simon would let the boat break before he let my body break, so everything's sea shanties and seagulls, right? Does that verbal contract still hold even if I've been caught visibly suppressing a yawn? 

Anyway. An hour or so on the calm, glinting waters of the Solent Channel. It would be invigorating.

“Get ready to tack!”

One of the words I learn very early on is ‘tacking’. Tacking involves moving the headsail via the ropes and winches, so that it moves from one side of the boat to the other. It changes our direction really quickly. When this happens, the boat dips at a steep sideways angle, and so it swings from being about 45 degrees to the water on one side to being 45 degrees to the water on the other. You’re also having to completely shift balance and your position, and the entire crew has to scramble to change sides, so that they're always sitting on the ‘high side’.

We try a couple of tacks on the still waters of the marina just to get our hand in, and though they're a bit clumsy, we nail the theory.

“Get ready to tack!”

We gingerly approach the starting line, along with about 40 other boats in our race. However, and without anyone’s permission, the weather was changing. What had been a tranquil harbour, with all the nautical menace of a church pond, had suddenly livened up. The wind was suddenly much more noticeable and conditions had evolved into a seascape that Simon the skipper and his first mate were now calling ‘a bit lumpy’. 

Still, they reassured us that they would never let things get too hairy, and Simon announced once again that he would let the boat break before he let any of our bodies break. He notably avoids making eye contact with me this time. I wish he would stop saying the word "bodies". Something honks. We set off on our little race.

“Get ready to tack!”

After about four minutes or so, I’m ready to stop. I’ve already fallen off my seat twice and I'm storing a litre of brine in each shoe. The first order comes. I’m on winch duty, and my manoeuvring partner Daniela is pulling the rope. Sheet. Whatever. The pair on the other side release their winch, and Daniela pulls until she can’t any more, and I take over. I'm no stronger than Daniela, so this feels like yacht theatre. We’d done this quite well in the practice session, jokily threading the rope, but there's much less hilarity when strangers are yelling at you.

We’re on the high side of the boat. Daniela pulls all she can, then retreats as the boat sways and starts to lift up on the other side. The sail rapidly moves across the deck. I am now on the low side, being screamed at by Simon the skipper to winch (‘grind’) as fast as I can. Honestly? I’m fully committed to winching at this juncture. There’s very little else on my mind, to be frank. When a 40-foot yacht is towering above you at a 70 degree angle, your thoughts are mostly related to changing that situation as quickly as possible.

So, I’m winching. Grinding. But it’s not the relaxed, carefree grinding I was doing in the marina. Marina Paul, with his sarcasm and misplaced bravado, is nowhere to be seen. Because of the angle, the low side of the yacht is…what’s the nautical term for this…IN THE SEA. My foot is horizontal against the side of the yacht, and also very much IN THE SEA. The sea is going past quite quickly indeed and there’s honestly no shortage of it going in my face, thanks very much for asking. I’m fine for water in my face. I've got too much of it, if anything. 

I’m also losing my balance, what with the sea and the wind and the ridiculous angle and, oh yes, not ever having been on a competitive racing yacht before. I lose my grip. My immediate thought, after “Oh, I seem to have lost my grip and the floor isn’t where you might assume it to be” is “Well, at least Simon the skipper will let the boat break before he lets my body break”.

On a downward trajectory, I hit the post that holds up the wire handrail around the side of the yacht. My arms and legs luckily cushion the blow with their soft, bruisable flesh, otherwise I might have been quite hurt. As I lay there dazed, the rushing sea an inch from my astonished face, I hear the reassuring voice of Skipper Simon.

“Let him through! Let him through!”

Ah good, he’s clearing the deck so that one of the crew can help me up and pull me to safety. Break the boat to save my body, Simon the skipper. 

“Get that winch going!”

Ah good, he isn’t doing any such thing. He’s ordering someone else to take over my job so that we don’t lose our position. I lay there for an amount of time that I hope strikes a suitable balance between passive-aggressive protest and not being swept overboard to suffer a severe aquatic discourtesy. Nobody cares or notices, though, so I indignantly pull myself up onto a more suitable part of the yacht.

The squall passes, the boat levels out somewhat and I sit back, panting and nodding that I was OK to the few people that seemed concerned. The other first timers drop their gaze to the deck in embarrassment. Et tu, Beefy Boys? 

“Get ready to tack!”

One thing about the Cowes Week regatta is that there's quite a lot of boats on the water. It's the main thing about the event, really. Imagine one of those traffic roundabouts in developing countries or Paris, where there are no discernible rules and cars come at you from every direction. Now, imagine that a hundred times bigger and in wavy, unforgiving water and with bigger, much less responsive vehicles. We’re in one race, sure, but we’re also cutting through other people’s races, dodging official speedboats, and looking out for buoys. In short, there’s a hell of a lot of tacking required. 

The Beefy Boys are tasked with ‘gibing’, which hardly ever happens, their useful muscles lying mostly dormant. The order to tack, by contrast, comes about every 45 seconds. My life is now just a frequent cycle of physical and mental stress, balancing under duress, spitting out seawater and having two people scream at me with diametrically opposing orders, resulting in my not really doing either, increasing the intensity of both screams simultaneously.

Two hours later, although it felt like about four years at sea, things calm down. We round a buoy, level out the boat, all sit down and unpack our lunches. I feel battered and sea-swept, but we eat ravenously and catch our breaths. It’s actually pleasant, gliding along, the sun on our faces, the sea gods appeased, and much more like I’d pictured this entire afternoon. Sure, I had much less skin on my palms and a few new bruises and a seething hatred of competitive yachting, but it’s close to what I envisaged. 

After all, it had been an adventure, and we could now look forward to heading back to the marina, changing out of our sodden clothes, booking a counselling session and knocking back a refreshing Valium Martini.

“20 minutes,” announces Simon the skipper.

“Until we get back to the harbour?” I asked. “That’s such a relief. Thanks for getting us round the course.”

“Er, no,” he says. “Until we start the second half of the race.”

“GET READY TO TACK!”

The conditions have been reassessed are now euphemistically being referred to as "testing". Now I'm no Vasco de Gama, but I assume that this is worse than "lumpy". During lunch, I had texted my friend to find out where she was, her reply saying that she was annoyed because it was slightly too sunny in the reserved seating area in the champagne tent. I did look for sympathy, honestly I did, but I think it had been exorcised from me via some kind of brackish enema.

Two further hours of near-constant tacking. The seadogs at the front change a pole ONCE, and in calm seas. The Beefy Boys just move a big rope a couple of times. Two of the original four-person tacking team have given up and are now sitting at the back, not doing anything. This means that for the second half, I am involved in every single tack, as opposed to just alternate ones. Why hadn't I thought of giving up and not doing anything before it became impossible to do so without looking like a spoilsport? I'm lazy! I LOVE to shirk responsibilities! I think the sea air has fogged my senses. 

"GET READY TO TACK!"

Sometime into the third hour, we hit a calmer run, with no tacking required for a while. I clamber up onto the high side, holding onto the pole that had previously saved me, dreamily watching the seagulls. They’re nimbly flying around, turning in the air at will, unbound by earthly laws, societal pressures or morality. How free they are, how noble and graceful, how pure and otherworldly.

“GET READY TO TACK!”

Yes…I hear you, Simon…as if in a dream…I’m going to tack now…look, see how well I tack…this is my life now…was there anything before this?...I’m ready to tack….always…ready to tack…
​

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