I've just come ashore at Lake Garda, having just won the Adolfo Bastardo Trophy with my International 14 helmsman, Martin Jones. You'd think I'd be pleased, and I am, but there are some daunting responsibilities that go with winning this strange race. First off is having to drink a bottle of grappa this evening, which is poured into the upturned trophy of a bronze sculpture of a Swiss 14 sailor's foot. This is in so-called celebration, although if you've ever tasted grappa you'll be wondering what part this horrible alcoholic concoction could have to do with celebration.
But drinking grappa is the rule of the Bastardo, and no doubt it will leave us in no fit state for racing in the Riva Cup tomorrow. The second onus as winners of the Bastardo is that Martin and I must return next year to defend our title, or suffer a $4,000 penalty for failure to appear. So it looks like I'll be back next year, the third year running. Tough life, coming back to Garda.
This year confirms what last year's event had reminded me, that Garda really is the best place in Europe for sailing, although the 29er sailors that were here a few weeks ago may disagree. They had non-stop rain and no wind the whole time they were here. I just hope we continue our good run of luck for the next three days of the Riva Cup, as the four days that we've been here so far have been sensational. The sunshine looms over the mountains in the morning with the end of the northerly petering out as the air heats up. There's no rush to get sailing as the wind doesn't come in until around 12 or one o'clock. You can see the line of breeze coming down the lake from the south, and if you're hanging your spinnaker out to dry you'd better get it down quick, as the wind hits with some force when it arrives.
Then comes the least fun part of the day, launching off the ridiculously inadequate slipway at Riva. Launching off a lee shore is never easy at the best of times, but it really puts the pressure on when it's blowing Force 5 and you can only hold the aft half of the boat because the slipway is too short. The number of near-misses I've witnessed in the past few days, where 14s, 505s or various other dinghies have narrowly avoided destruction on the rocks just a few yards away.
The only way to do it is for helm and crew to decide exactly who is going to do what. Make a firm plan, then gather up some friends to give you a helping hand, and be positive about everything you do. Lift the boat into the water, hold it firmly with all the sheets well eased, rudder in, daggerboard in and down, get the helmsman settled and ready to steer, get the jib half pulling and then the crew jumps in and pushed the bow away from the wind so that you get firmly on to one tack with the jib pulling and the foils gripping the water. Then focus on sailing the boat until you are well away from the shore. When you've got some distance from the shore, then you can think about faffing around with centreboard, and vang and Cunningham tensions.
It is the most stressful part of sailing at Garda but the rewards once you're out there are immense. The Bastardo race was an absolute classic. It was a small but select fleet with multiple World, European and National Champions all vying for supremacy. Tim Robinson has come out of retirement to sail with his old 49er crew Zeb Elliott. Alister Richardson, recently retired from 49er sailing, has decided to make his future in 14 racing - and with Rob Greenhalgh off doing his Volvo Ocean Race campaign - Alister has inherited his 14 and 18-foot skiff world champion crew Dan Johnson. Former 505 World Champion Tim Hancock is crewing for Ian Pinnell, who has won championships in just about everything except the 14. Showing the most blistering pace of all, however, was Hyde Sails' Mike Lennon crewed by John McKenna.
Luckily for us, the Bastardo wasn't all about boatspeed, as it rarely is at Garda. The Bastardo has many unique aspects to it, not least that you have to memorise the course from the midnight race briefing at the local Oca Bar the night before. Race course setter Zeb Elliott was kind enough to set a very simple triangle course, with a beat up to Limone, back to the bottom of the Lake at Torbole and then a reach back to the finish in Riva. However, the random element in all of this was that the leader should round the first mark that he can find in Limone with a boat moored to it (assuming that there is one), and the same for Torbole. Not exactly the most precise of sailing instructions.
The start is similarly quirky, with the sound and flag signals controlled by the wives of the fleet. However the wives were having to multitask in ways that only they can, as babies started crying and yelling for milk just as the wives were meant to be sounding the one-minute signal and then the start signal. Despite this, it was a clean start as the fleet launched out of the line en masse on port tack, boats leaping out of the waves and mains ragging as upwind battle commenced. What a game of snakes and ladders that proved to be. Our excellent start soon turned to mush as we sailed too close to the cliffs and Robinson and Lennon cruised on by further offshore. The breeze was blowing hard but the shifts were massive. That was just as well for us after getting the first couple of shifts badly wrong. We needed something to get back in touch with the leaders.
The weird thing about Garda is just how localised the strong wind is to the northern end of the Lake. After two miles of hard slog through the Force 4 to 5 winds, it starts softening up quite quickly and suddenly you need to push all the power into the rig that you can find. It's never easy knowing where to set your rig tension and your rake when you know you're going to start and finish in a raging gale, but spend the middle part of the race in drifting conditions. Fortunately, being one of the heavier teams in the fleet, Martin and I seemed to carry our momentum from the stronger winds and found some uncharacteristic pace in the lighter conditions. We were up to second with Lennon and McKenna still leading the way. Leading the way is not always an advantage, however, not least when you're searching for a mark and moored boat that may not even exist.
Eventually Lennon spotted a buoy with a boat and he made a beeline for it. But it was so close to shore, McKenna had to jump out and manhandle their 14 round the boat. We pulled up our foils and manage to sneak around the outside of the leaders in one smooth manoeuvre, and now we took the lead as we hoisted our kite to head back down to the bottom of Garda. However Lennon is soon up and running again and grabs the lead as the wind starts to build on our way back down.
Another quirk of Garda is that you generally find the most wind in by the cliffs, which must tower a good two or three thousand feet either side. It is an awesome feeling, blasting down the face of these cliffs in gusts that accelerate you to ridiculous speeds. Ian Pinnell and Tim Hancock went in closer than anyone else and they were hammering down the western side of the Lake. Eventually they had to gybe and that's where it gets tricky. You're travelling at such a rate that everything you do has to be spot on. The rudder becomes so twitchy and responsive that the slightest wobble can throw you in. And so in sploshed the Pinnell & Bax boat.
It would be interesting to know how fast 14s have become. Alister Richardson took his GPS out on the 14 in Portland Harbour recently and recorded 26 knots boatspeed in 18 knots of wind. He said it was just a good but fairly unspectacular sail, and some of the speeds that he was experiencing at the recent 14 Worlds in New Zealand were far more dramatic. He believes that in extreme conditions the boats are easily achieving over 30 knots and probably touching 35 at times.
The first race of the Worlds sounded like an epic, with multiple capsizes and even a few broken bones. It was an absolute war. But Richardson said that at one point it was so windy down the run and they were going so fast and creating so much apparent wind that they couldn't lay the leeward mark. In other words the boat was travelling so deep it should have been sailing on the other gybe. Indeed at one point the wind caught the leeward side of the mainsail leech and started to grab it, which would have made them gybe involuntarily. That would have been nasty. Fortunately Richardson caught it early enough and stabbed the tiller to leeward to keep them on the same gybe.
Anyway, back in Garda we weren't experiencing anything quite as extreme as that, but as we approached Torbole we did have a problem finding a rounding mark with a moored boat. There wasn't one! Time to improvise. We saw Lennon and McKenna dropping their kite and aiming at a line of buoys, so we gybed and dropped the kite next to them. We were side by side, doing a good 15 to 18 knots two-sail reaching aiming at the same gap between these two buoys moored close together. ‘Please don't let there be a line between them," I remember praying to myself. If there had been a line lurking below the surface, I don't know what would have happened. Some lucky bystander on the shore would have witnessed an incredible synchronised cartwheel and God knows how much carnage, but both teams heaved a big sigh of relief as we got through unscathed.
The last reach back across the bottom of the Lake was close for a while, but Lennon started stretching away. Both boats hooked on to the stern wave of a big passenger cat travelling from Torbole to Riva, and we were surfing the wave to cheers from the onlooking passengers. However, as Lennon overtook the boat the wind started to drop and he now had the big yellow pleasure cat bearing down on him. The skipper could easily have altered course but he was obviously feeling uncharitable that day, as Lennon was forced to gybe out of danger and save themselves from being squashed. This gave us the break we needed and we spinnakered across the finish line just yards ahead of a disgruntled Lennon and McKenna. We had just won, the perfect way for my helmsman to celebrate his birthday. Whether we'll feel quite so pleased with ourselves this evening, after we've been forced to consume the dreaded grappa, I'm not quite so sure. Winning isn't all it's cracked up to be.
