The finale: a reason to race

We were towards the back of a bunch of yachts when we were at the south end of Lismore island. Most of them went to the west of the island, we went to the east behind a couple of other boats. At this decision point, we got really focussed on racing. If we had made the right decision about Lismore and if we raced well on Ben Nevis, we had the chance of moving up from something like 14th place to 5th. We all felt that 5th place in 22 year old Tactix would be a really good result for us and something that we really wanted. Enter race mode.

We had a good sail in excellent wind with the spinnaker up around the east of Lismore. When we popped out at the top of the island, the western fleet were some way behind us. The eastern 3 boats were within 2 miles of us, ahead of us. The good thing about being behind other boats is that you can see whether they are sailing into good wind or into bad. This helped us to creep up on the other boats.

Loch Linnhe (in the background), near the Corran Narrows: taken from Glencoe. This is the countryside we are sailing through.

Iain and I planned the run up Ben Nevis. All the numbers pointed to us being able to do 3 hours if we really applied ourselves. This seemed unlikely as it never seems to go to plan on the Ben. 3 years ago I had a dreadful run on the ben. On the previous two years, we have run conservatively to avoid an injury so we didn't mess up our chances of winning the overall event. This time there seemed to be little to lose from just going for it. We decided that if we told the marshals that we expected to be on the Ben for 3 hours then that would put some pressure on ourselves to deliver. We also had a look at the running form of the boats ahead of us and realised that there were some good teams to chase and overtake to get our 5th place goal, so we really did need to apply ourselves.

The wind was really strong when we dropped the spinnaker and took down the mainsail. Tactix was rolling quite a bit. It was all quite hairy. After the frantic sail removal, it seemed like no time before we were stepping off the pontoon and up to the marshals.

It was obvious to us that we were running well as soon as we set off on the tarmac paths towards the Ben. We seemed to be comfortably running under 7 minute miles all the way to the Ben Nevis inn. We passed a couple of teams by soldiers bridge and caught sight of Testa Rossa before Ben Nevis Inn and focussed on catching them.

We ascended strongly up to the lake, passing Testa Rossa half way up, then took the direct route up in preference to the zig zags. We really powered up this, ascending at about 20m/min. I kept expecting our rhythm to break, but it never did. We ran on the flatter sections in the cloud at the top, clipped the checkpoint at the cairn and then headed down.

Descending was colder than ascending, but there was no time to add clothes. The further down we got, the warmer we would be. We also descended really well. Iain seems to be very good at this. He seemed to spot good little lines through the screes. I just tried to hang onto his tail. Once we hit the main path by the lake, it became harder underfoot. You also have to place your feet really well on the fixed stones here. Iain is better at that than me. I do most of my running in Wiltshire. Iain does most of his in snowdonia. Iain is more akin to the rocky tracks.

My brother was at the Ben Nevis inn. It was nice to see someone who was cheering for us. We didn't have any supporters on any of the other legs, so it made a change to see a familiar face.

Iain and I didn't talk to each other on the road run back. We both knew what we had to do and just pushed really hard. Although the transition to road running was initially difficult, we were soon into our stride again and were really pleased to be running at under 7 minutes a mile again. We pushed hard all the way and were almost sprinting at the end in order to try to get our 3 hour time. We crossed the line and were told we had done 2h59m: a time we were really stoked with.

We were given our finisher's medals (which are really nice), drank fizzy wine and reminisced about the great race we had had. It was a real team effort as ever. We were well pleased with our 5th place in Tactix. Winning the King of the Mountains was a nice bonus. I liked the way we ran better and better on each stage.

This year Ben Nevis was my favourite mountain. We had such a great run on it. It has really inspired me to go and do some fell running. It's been too long....

Hope springs eternal

Spirits are on the rise now. We know that 3 boats have finished. We think there are 9 boats ahead of us of which 8 are within about 3 miles. If we sail well and run well, we are still in with a chance of a good finishing place. We are now surfing nicely along the inside of Lismore island. At this rate we should make it through the firth of lorn tidal gate and we stand a good chance of making the corran narrows tidal gate too. After that there is a quick sprint to the finish of the sailing. We're well psyched for the run, so there is everything to play for.

One thing we have heard is that some of the boats have passed the mull of Kintyre twice. When we were passed by about 12 boats between Whitehaven and mull of Kintyre, this might have been because 6 boats passed us twice. This makes us feel a lot better.

Geoff is on the helm at the moment. This gives me a lot of confidence. He has that competitive steely determination in his eyes. Piers, our ace spinnaker trimmer is poised with the lines in his hand, waiting on geoff's every command while gary is poised like some a prowling cat, ready to jump on the foredeck and do something physical with the sails.

A hive of activity on board as we ratchet the racing up a notch on the final stretch.

Sailing with the fleet

We feel we are really sailing with the main body of the race fleet at the moment. The top 3 boats are already in and we are some way down the fleet. We think the source of our demise was not getting to caernarfon an hour earlier than we did. After that we have missed tidal gates and have been sat in post when the wind has been good. That small difference on the first leg has been magnified by the course. We would still not be in the top 3 so is doesn't matter.

We sailed nicely up the galloway coast and then found a particularly windless spot in the firth of clyde. We had a big rowing session across that in the sunshine until we found some wind again near ailsa craig. Other boats seemed to have faired better offshore and about 5 boats passed us at the mull of kintyre. When the wind died we rowed past them in the dark.

Gary helming up the Galloway coast in the early hours of the morning. "You see that lighthouse over there? It used to be over there".

The wind has been off and on in the sound of jura. Currently it is on and we are sailing nicely past the sound of luing. The one drama we have had today was trying to start the engine to charge the batteries. Geoff spent half an hour taking bits of the engine apart to get it going. It was really interesting watching him as i need to be good at that for my boat. He seems to know his way around his boat pretty well!
The thing iain and i need to think about is the last run up the ben. The fastest time we know of yet is 3h38m so we have our sights set on something a bit quicker than that. We have a plan! It would be nice to finish off with a good run.

On a mudbank in Whitehaven

It was worth trying to get out of whitehaven on a lowish tide. Even if we ended up grounded, we would be able to move as soon as there was enough tide. We knew we were unlikely to succeed, but we had a go anyway.

What is a great feeling in running this leg is being able to get up and down the mountain on the same tide. Madame wen had managed that this year: great effort lads. This was going to be more difficult for us as we did not make it into the lock right at the start of the tide. It was really pretty inevitable that we were going to ground on a mubank. We glided gracefully into it. It wasn't the same heart wrenching feeling when we had done is with Andy rankin in 2008.

Geoff had a really good go at trying to get us off the mudbank. We had the sails up and were all leaning out to the side to try to reduce the draught of the boat. This was pretty hard work after the run, clutching some halyards on the deck of the boat and heaving as hard as we could. This did help, but progress through the mud was really slow and every minute we were stuck there the tide was going out. I think we tried to move for about 40 minutes and then succumbed to the inevitable.

Dinner was served as we were sat on the mudbank. Atfter about an hour sat there, we could feel Tactix momentarily float and we started the game again. This time, tide and time were on our side. We cleared the mudbank reasonably quickly and then grounded quite hard on the sandbank at the mouth of the harbour entrance. We bounced forward on this, gaining a few inches on every wave as the wave lifted the keel a bit, only to crunch back down onto the sand. Eventually we did make it off and we had a lead over the other boats in the marina of about 30 minutes. We could hear the other crews pleading with the lock master to let them out. I think they would not have liked hitting the sandbar.

By the time we were in the open sea, we had a good fresh wind and were soon tanking along. Gary had a fairly extreme headsail change to do as the waves were crashing around. It looked quite wet and cold. I went below for a sleep!

Gary on the deck lashing things down. It was a lot bumpier than it looks in the photo. Gary and Piers got drenched on deck.

The sailors sailed all night, doing shifts. The wind got up quite a bit and we had to change sails again in the dark: several times as the wind inceased and abated. We passed the mull of Galloway at dawn. We thought that this would be the first of several passings of the mull as we were going against the tide. There has been a good little wind since and we are now sailing quite nicely to portpatrick and on up the coast in the sunshine. Gary has been steering for about 6 hours since piers and Geoff went to bad. I am now in sailor mode and will probably be like this up until we get to the sound of Luing. I suspect that I will turn into a rower at some stage too.

It is nearly time to make bacon butties. Gary is yawning and looks like going to bed would do him some good. It has been a long night for him. We will get the bacon buttes down in time for the shift change. I am the chef. It is time for breakfast!

Scafell pike part 2

We had a good ride into ennerdale on the bikes. Gary had fixed my bike up the week before and having a proper well set up touring bike for the ride made a lot of difference. It is still a long way gently uphill towards ennerdale and is hence hard work. I was just trying to keep somewhere near the tail of Iain.

After the 5 minute enforced wait at ennerdale, we set off on the run.we ran nicely up to Black Sail youth hostel, keeping up a really good steady pace, getting to the youth hostel bang on our scheduled time. Going up black sail seemed like hard work as the sun was starting to get some power in it, but we had a nice run down the other side and trotted into was dale head bang on time again. We found out that we were about 15 minutes faster to wasdale than our rivals GFT and things were looking good.

We were surprised to pass Predator on the way up Scafell pike as we had heard on the radio that two people had been taken off yacht Predator via the VHF radio on the passage over from Caernarfon. I think they were pretty bemused by the question as they were alright. We think that there are probably two yacht Predators out here, only one of them in the race.

A sight we didn't want to see was GFT coming down the mountain before we had got anywhere near Brown Tongue. We initially thought that they had had a blistering run up the mountain. From talking to them, we found out that one of them was pretty debilitated with some virus and they had had to call it a day without getting to the top. It was sad for them.

We navigated really well up the mountain in the heat. It makes a real difference which side of the path you run on, knowing where the bad bits are etc. and which subpath to take when the main path bifurcates. The trouble we were having up to the top was the heat. It was just stinking hot and humid to boot. The climb to the top was a bit laborious, but we had an excellent run down, we seemed to be flying and got back to wasdale in the time we had told the marshals: 1h40m.

The best thing about the wasdale checkpoint is the drink and the orange slices. They are a al pick up before the climb back up Black Sail pass. Black sail was really hard work on the way up. The heat was pretty stifling. This didn't seem to affect Iain nearly as much as me. I knew things weren't quite right with me when I had both goosebumps and sweat was dripping off me. I think I had got quite hot. It was just a question of getting my head down and getting on with it.

We passed a few teams coming the other way. Some of them looked quite hot too. One of the guys from a team was sliding down the grass on his backside. Presumably this was due to knee trouble. It didn't look good, especially considering that he had a descent of Scafell Pike and of Black Sail ahead of him.

We ran really well along the track down from Black Sail. This is really hard work after the mountain, but we kept a steady pace and counted down the landmarks on the way back (that we had noted on the way out): the foxgloves, the log pile, the gate etc.

We weren't sure whether our return to ennerdale was accurately logged. We think we had been on the mountain for 4h19m. This was faster than when I had done it with Andy Rankin in 2008. At this stage I knew we were on for a good time. All we had to do was to cycle back well and we would be happy.

I dread the ride up out of ennerdale. There is a really steep hill up to the top near Lamplugh. The gears I had on the bike had been specially purchased for cycling around Cambridge and were hence not ideal for this. We plugged away at it steadily and it was a great feeling to be on top. We were a little worried about snapping a chain or something up here, but we had no bike problems at all on the ride in or out.

The ride down from Lamplugh back to Whitehaven is fantastic. It is gently downhill all the way and you can really fly. It was a great ride back: much quicker than previous years on my better bike. We called the crew up via our friend Ken Fitzpatrick so they were waiting for us when we got back. We clocked in to record a time of 6h35m. We think this is just 2 minutes shy of the stage record. Maybe we could have gone quicker if it hadn't been so hot, but in the conditions we were really pleased with our time.

The crew had found some other crew who were willing to take our bikes up to Corpach, so we dropped our bikes with them (gratefully: as it meant that we would have more living space on Tactix: the bikes had been in the main living area for some of the way up). W ran along the pontoon, got on board and then set off into the lock, trying to get out of the harbour before the tide receded. It was unlikely that we would get out, but it was worth a try. That's another story!

Steady Scafell Pike

Something went right on Scafell Pike. I don't know what we did so well, but it seemed to work.

What we do before each leg is to work out our desired splits for the run. We are usually a little bit slower than the splits, but this time I think we were minute perfect on every one. I thus think what we did right was to have a really well timed steady run. We cycled well for a change too.

The thing that was really hard about the day was the heat. It was both hot and humid: a nasty combination. Those having picnics by the side of the path seemed to be enjoying it, but it wasn't nice for us. At one stage I had both goosebumps and sweat dripping off me. Apparently this is indicative of being too hot.

On our return, we ended up sat in the mud outside Whitehaven for a couple of hours. We would have to have been 20 minutes quicker on the hill to avoid that. That was not going to happen.

There is quite a lot of wind out here now. We are moving quite quickly, but it is bouncy. It is time to get my head down and sleep through this difficult bit of sailing. Piers is on the helm and seems to be in his element. It is nice to see.

Approaching Whitehaven

We are now approaching Whitehaven. It seems fairly gloomy around out there. This is ok for us as I am pretty confident we know the way up scafell pike. The passage across was pretty calm and we have had a good night's sleep. We have also eaten reasonably well. It would be nice to say that we are raring to go, but it is not quite like that.

The next thing we need to do is to get our bikes sorted out. The team bike mechanic is making loud sleepy noises. We are going to have to stop that pretty soon.

The wind had been really good a minute ago, but has now died a bit. The lead boats are waiting for the tide to get into Whitehaven, so we have effectively just about caught them up. If we run and bike well, we should be able to get back just in time for the first lock out. The first lock out in tactix, with her shallow draught is earlier than the first lock out for the other boats, so there is some motivation to get a move on on the mountain.