The Three Peaks Yacht Race

Prairie Oyster

Gordon is back after a long spell of 20 years away from the race, skippering in his own yacht Prairie Oyster.  Simon, Dave, Keith and Denis are back again from last year.  After trying to traverse the Swellies three times in 2009, Simon said he’d forgotten the height of the bridges and wanted to revisit.  Spending time in the Menai Strait gave us time for bonding.  It would have gone better but we ran out of Flip chart paper and Keith retired to his bunk, never noticing we spent the night laying aground on our side.  He said he’d had the best night’s sleep on the boat in a long time.  Taking two days to reach Puffin Island nearly cleaned us out of food, the gin running out the first night.  The Spag/bol went down a treat.

At last we reached the Irish Sea to find Simon could not remember the height of bridges.  He went back before the presentation dinner to check his memory.  To rub salt into the wound the coastguard called us, on instructions from race control, asking us what our intentions were.  Someone shouted they were quite honourable and they’d get together with whoever it was and sort out the ‘tiny’ problem

We sailed into Whitehaven to a rapturous roar from not a single marshal, we were so late they’d gone to bed.  On the return from Scafell Pike by Keith and Simon, Sue, Simon’s better half, insisted we tell them when we wanted to leave, And that was just before the third round of bacon sandwiches and the lock closed for the Winter. The pressure.

The sail from Whitehaven to Corpach went like a dream with wind building behind, the only problem was when we had short diversion into the mouth of Luce Bay when bits of string started to part company with the sail, most of the gear and the boom had to be locked in the centre position.  As we approached the Mull of Kintyre we past Marcuja.  Try as we might we could not get the Last Inn cup so we ‘went for it’, and despite the batteries on our five gps’s running out, our road map being a 1996 version, spinning round in circles in the whirl pools in the Sound of Luing and saying hello to a rather large chunk of rock as we exited the Sound we won the cup for fastest team over the leg.

On the return run on the Ben Keith tried to dodge a cyclist along the road section and was knocked into a ditch suffering a badly sprained ankle.  The chilled champers help revive their spirits and Keith finally found a use for the two triangular bandages.  He filled them with ice, put them round his swollen limb, lay on his back and drank champagne.  His greatest challenge was yet to come.  He had to get back to Southampton the following afternoon for a friend’s wedding.  Hospital first, Taxi second, Train, Bus, Plane, Train, Taxi and supper by the skin of his, now very swollen and black and blue, ankle.

Lets hope this year’s race is a little more sedate!!  I wonder if Gordon knows what he’s in for??