Oystercatcher XXVI won the cup in 2007 and would have won in 2008 had we not clipped a moored Squib 200 yards from the finish.
This year there was still plenty of puff left at the end of a windy Burnham Week with a running start in 14 knots gusting 17. A committee boat replaced the traditional Pile House starting box on the seawall with a pin end mark in line with the Horse Shoal.
Oystercatcher was the deepest drafted yacht in the race making a slightly late pin end start on port gybe under a heavy asymmetric chute. Some aggressive gybes enabled us to start stretching away from the fleet, most of which flew conventional spinnakers with poles spread aft enabling them to run flat and dodge some of the building flood tide. New that week, Robbie Stewart’s Booty! was going well.
Both the Inner and Outer Crouch marks were to port, which forced the fleet astern to follow Oystercatcher into the foul tide. Once clear of the river the leg out had become a reach with the wind gusting to 18 knots and we were off, bow up and at times hitting 15 knots. From the Outer Crouch we had to harden closer to the wind and went to change from our code 4 asymmetric to our code 5A fractional hoist reacher. This change went horribly wrong when the old sail filled with water on the way down following a failure to trip its sheet just before the drop. We “parked” for 2 or 3 minutes while the crew wrestled to get the sail back aboard without success. Eventually crewman Alan Brook tripped the halyard releasing the sail from under the hull and enabling its recovery from the windward side, the sail now in six pieces.
Under normal race conditions that should have been “it” but Oystercatcher is an incredible yacht and with our designer, young Tom Humphreys aboard, we were soon speeding away from the chasing pack that had all closed up during our spinnaker disaster. More reaching at 15-16 knots and then a long beat home from the Swin Spitway buoy. We were getting 20-degree shifts on the beat with winds down to 12 knots and at times gusting to 20 as clouds scudded overhead. We did our best to work the shifts and change gears with halyard tensions and sail trim while our skilled navigator Erik Ellis made sure we hit the corners and stayed in the best of the fair flood tide.
Our effort working the shifts on the beat home helped get us back into the frame and we finished about 25 minutes clear of the next yacht, a J130, winning by the slender margin of just over a minute. After our spinnaker mess we didn’t feel like winners but in the end the beat home did it, together with a little help from the tide as we finished close to high water making it that much harder for those astern.
Our crew included Hanah Stodel, Britain’s top Paralympic sailor and this was our 5th Town Cup win, a record that, despite ‘wasting’ our chances last year, will hopefully take some beating.
Richard Matthews Oystercatcher XXVI