The Solent has a way of humbling the best-laid plans, but sometimes, the best plans are the ones forged over a spontaneous pint in a Hamble bar.
In 1991, Dave Bedford called with a last-minute lifeline: Simon Slater’s J24, RSJ, was available. We had the boat, we had the muscle and nimble co-ordination in Nick McDonald and Jon Santy, and we’d secured a suite of borrowed Hood sails from Ivan Coryn. But a J24 in the Solent is a beast of physics and timing. We needed a trimmer who could “feel” the wind, and a tactican who could outsmart the competition.
Enter Jim.
I’d first met Jim in St. Lucia after the 1990 ARC race. Fresh from the Whitbread Round the World Race, he’d done the crossing on Chris Little’s Bounder, and had won that race by a week. We’d spent that season blast-cruising the Caribbean, navigating a blur of wild parties in every anchorage. By ’91, Jim was living on a Hillyard down in Fareham Creek, but by a stroke of coastal luck, I bumped into him in a bar in Hamble just as we were getting the boat sorted.
”Hey Jim, wanna do the J24 Europeans next week?”
“Sure mate!”
The High Street and the “Condor” Moments:
We rocked up in Cowes, bunking down at Lester and Boo’s cottage. The evening before the first gun, Dave was pacing the floorboards, getting anxious. “Are you sure this mate of yours is actually coming?”
I strolled down to the High Street and found him exactly where you’d expect: leaned up against a wall, chatting away to some arbitrary guy, probably explaining the complex physics of sail twist.
While Jim handled the “feel” and Dave handled the “speed,” Nick provided the essential atmosphere. Between the frantic, spray-soaked races of a massive 70-boat fleet, Nick would settle in for his “Condor moments” between races—spliffing up a rack of them to find a hazy bit of zen. It was the perfect, relaxed counterweight to the high-tension starts.
The Winning Edge: Tide and Trim
When the gun went off, the real work began. The Solent is a high-stakes chess match played on a moving floor, and Alan’s navigation became our secret weapon. Playing the “conveyor belt” of the tide was the difference between being buried in the pack and being gone. Alan knew exactly when to tuck into the shallows to escape the foul current and when to slingshot into the deep water.
With Alan’s calls on the tide, Jim’s natural flair for trimming the Hood sails, and Dave’s fast hands on the tiller, RSJ was a machine. We nailed a string of consistent results, though we were haunted by a certain Australian boat that seemed to defy physics in the chop. (As it turned out, they were—having been measured later as slightly longer and lighter in the ends).
The Result:
The week was a blur of tactical gambles and a few heated protests with a determined German crew. But when the points were finally tallied, the scratch crew that had come together by chance in a Hamble bar stood at the top of a 70-boat leaderboard.
1991 J24 European Champions.
I looked over at Jim as the realization sank in.
“How good was that, Jim?”
He gave that classic, salt-crusted grin. “Super good!”
