Welcome to Offshore RacingJoin the ASA Today

AN UPDATE ON THE NEW BRITISH SOLDIER

As of 28th April, the new J111 arrived gleaming. I and five other ASA sailors (including the yacht’s new REYC Bosun - LCpl Simpson) visited Port Hamble to conduct acceptance and sea trials on the new yacht. We spent a morning pouring over every aspect of the yacht’s build quality, specification and inventory. In the main, we found her to be in excellent order and the build and finish quality was extremely high. The yacht’s specifications matched our requirement exactly, especially in those areas where we had stipulated additional reinforcing to fortify her for the tough life ahead. The few minor snags that we picked up were quickly fixed.

We spent an afternoon test sailing the boat with the Broker and North Sails’ representative. She sails beautifully on all points of sail. In 10 knots of breeze she made 8.1 knots upwind and offwind with her big masthead kite, we had her ‘planing at 12 knots. She is a dream to sail: light on the helm and extremely responsive, but she will require careful concentration in order to counter those breezy, twitchy moments.

Following formal acceptance, British Soldier was moved to Fort Blockhouse, her temporary home until she is moved to Hornet Services’ Sailing Club, where Nick Trundle (OIC JSASTC) has very kindly agreed to let her be dry sailed. Her lay apart store and sail locker will remain within the AOSC.

All registration formalities (i.e. Ships Radio Licence, EPIRB, Small Ship’s Register, Insurance, IRC Rating) are in hand and she will fly the defaced Blue Ensign. As expected, we have had to purchase new safety equipment, including an 8 man canister liferaft, which should see us through a minimum of 5 years. Our old EPIRB has been serviced and the battery replaced. The Naming Ceremony took place on Friday 17th May, following the conclusion of the Army Offshore Regatta (AOR) prize-giving. British Soldier took part in her first event over the weekend of 4-6th May, the first Royal Ocean Racing Club (RORC) offshore race of the 2013 season, the Cervantes Trophy Race (Cowes to Le Havre).

British Soldier has a full and varied race programme: the RORC series of races (including the Fastnet); Junior Offshore Group (JOG) and other inshore regattas, notably Cowes Week; the J Cup and Dartmouth Regattas. Toe in the Water has her for Cowes Week. Additionally, we have a number of mini-regattas for our sponsor Fujitsu .

Finally I would like to thank Cpl Jamie Smith RTR for all his excellent support over the last 5 years in looking after British Soldier (and Longbow before that). Whilst looking after the RACYC yacht White Knight VI, Jamie has single-handedly looked after British Soldier and been passionate in maintaining her to the highest professional racing standard. For the most part this has been hard graft and definitely unsung: although I think his own personal skippering highlight must have been his highly successful trans-Atlantic crossing from Cape Verde to Antigua in 2011. Well done on all fronts Jamie,- thanks very much for all you have done for Army sailing and we wish you the best of luck on your new course in life. The REYC has kindly agreed to take on BOSUN responsibilities for the new J111 for which the ASA is extremely grateful.

Tim Hill

For the Army Offshore Regatta and Services Offshore Regatta see Offshore Sailing