This race is a circumnavigation of the Isle of Sheppey in the Thames estuary. Several Cody have sailed it in the past and this year the Club hoped to do so again. The weather forecast earlier in the week was for strong winds, but in the days before the race a high-pressure system arrived and the forecast was for light winds. The distance is around 30 – 40 miles so a fair amount of wind is required to get around.
In the end, Simon and Stephen decided to race. This was to be Simon’s third race and it was Stephen’s first one.
We camped at an “off grid” campsite on Sheppey on the Saturday night. This was a lovely spot, overlooking the sea and in true Cody style with just a tap and a hole in the ground. Saturday night saw us explore a bit of the Island as we hunted for a pub. Like many islands it has a character of its own and we found it a little bit strange. At night the street lighting is less than we are used to and it all seemed to be a bit ghostly.
Sunday, the day of the race, saw no wind at all early in the morning. We launched from the very friendly Isle of Sheppey sailing club and crossed the start line with a tiny breeze and the tide against us. After an hour or so of this, there was talk of giving up and that we would not be able to get back before it was dark. However, optimism prevailed and we kept going as a decent breeze slowly developed.
We found a crew in the race sailing a Laser Stratos who were pretty evenly matched with us and we sailed with them the whole way. Sometimes they were ahead, sometimes us, and eventually they beat us by a minute. We sailed down the north shore of the Island, in the Thames, trying to play off the wind bending around headlands and fearsome warnings about off lying obstructions. It was a long slow beat to the first major headland after which we could free sheets a little and reach towards the inner channel that separates the island from the mainland.
There is a shallow sandy bar at the entrance to this channel which extends quite a way and that is not obvious. Cody Keith ran aground and capsized on this in an earlier race whilst under spinnaker and we did not want to do this. The water was confused and lumpy and we could not see the bottom clearly. The Stratos took a more inshore line and survived, but we were more cautious, although it was a nervous moment.
Once we turned into the inner channel, we had the wind astern and we had a spinnaker run for a couple of hours or so. This was a lovely sail in a warm quite strong breeze. The Stratos was a hundred feet ahead of us for much of this run, and we almost overtook them several times, but we never quite managed to do so. Their presence made it all the more interesting. In earlier races, Simon had to beat to windward up this narrow channel in the prevailing westerlies which was hard work. We were grateful to have the wind astern and to be able to do the longest dinghy spinnaker run that Stephen has ever done.
At one of the bridges to the Island we were required to capsize the boat to slide it underneath. We are used to doing this when sailing around Hayling Island and here we had many willing helpers from the sailing club to help us. It was good to get out of the boat for a minute or so as we did this.
As we emerged from the inner channel, it was down spinnaker and a beat in now quite brisk winds to re-join the Thames. Where the channel meets the Thames there was a patch of confused water that we sailed through, but which in hindsight we perhaps should have avoided by standing out a little further into the Thames. We were getting tired by now and maybe our judgement was impaired. Here, there were big standing waves, whirlpools and lots of turbulence. We got through with some exciting sailing. The locals apparently call this the, “washing machine” and it certainly lived up to its name.
Once through this it was a beat along the Thames shore of the Island back to the sailing club. The Stratos at this point managed to pull ahead of us, it was faster to windward, perhaps because it had newer sails, and it crossed the line just before us. Not a bad result after forty miles of racing together! Our total time on the water was around seven hours.
This was a demanding race that had a lot of variety. Despite the fairly benign conditions overall, there was quite a bit of turbulent water to sail through. The wind was fresh at times and we had to work hard beating into it. Not hitting the Island was a challenge. The highlight was the long spinnaker run along the inshore channel. Keeping our morale up at the beginning when we were not making progress was important.
Overall, this was an epic sail and a great Cody day out!
Simon M and Stephen D.
