Feeling our way in the Brixham Regatta

The Brixham Heritage Regatta turned into an unexpected challenge of navigation and nerves.

We made a good start across the line in very light wind and mist and willed our way north across Torbay to the first buoy. The one other boat in our Lugger class, Le Grand Lejon from Brittany, weighs nearly twice as much as Guiding Star and fell steadily behind.

However, that was about the end of the race. After we rounded the buoy, boats headed off on different tacks for a long beat south to the windward buoy near Berry Head, but the mist quickly thickened into fog and soon we couldn’t see any of the other 30 boats in the fleet; not even the three 80-foot Brixham trawlers, which are hard to miss. Visibility dropped to 50 metres.

We pressed on for half an hour, navigating by GPS and staring into the fog to keep watch. We heard on the radio first one, then two, boats withdraw from the race. The wind freshened and for a moment we hit 5 knots. But then the Regatta committee abandoned the race entirely and called all boats back.

Thanks to Sarah’s friend Peter Hunt for this shot of Guiding Star drifting in the mist before the start

Many thanks indeed to Matt for running our radio comms, Mark for helping to navigate, Paul for knowing every inch of Torbay and Brixham Harbour, and Emma and Sarah for calm helming.

I have no idea how the Regatta Committee worked out the results, but we were delighted to win the beautiful Toni Knights Lugger half-model for the first lugger. We were also surprised and happy to be awarded the Noss Marina Shield for Friday’s passage race from Dartmouth to Brixham, even though we were the only boat taking part and had to motor almost all the way because there was no wind. But we did turn up!

Full results are on the Brixham Heritage Regatta website.

Sarah, Emma and Paul with the Toni Knights Lugger half-model trophy. It’s a model of his own boat, IRIS. Sadly Toni wasn’t able to take part in the Regatta this year

Next morning, the sun shone from a cloudless sky.

Rafted against the beautiful Breton lugger Le Grand Lejon

More photos below of the Regatta and our passages up from Plymouth and back again. Many thanks to everyone for their photos.

I’m only sorry there are no photos of the epic bacon, egg and fried bread sandwiches made by Jon on the passage up from Plymouth to Dartmouth and Brixham. It was a pity there wasn’t much wind for sailing, Jon, but it was wonderful to have you on board.

On the outside of our pontoon in Plymouth, we found a 52-metre super yacht owned by Wendy Schmidt, wife of the founder of Google. A full-time crew of eight, a herb garden in the galley and much gleaming gel coat with gold leaf stripes. Our motto for the next few days became, “What would Wendy do?”