Guiding Star sailed beautifully in light airs at the Falmouth Classics in June. We won the Lugger class, admittedly against weakened competition. Our Boys didn’t come because Phil and Liz were sailing their new boat Alice back from Antigua, Barnabas had been crippled by having to chop five feet off their mainmast because of rot, and Grayhound was not sailing as fast under her new owners as she used to under Marcus and Freya.
Our finest moment came shortly after the start of the first race, when Grayhound tacked and tried to overtake us from windward. She’s 63’6″ without her spars and 60 tonnes, so nearly twice as long and four times as heavy as Guiding Star. The last time she tried to bulldoze us at Falmouth a few years ago, we decided it was safer not to insist on our rights under the rules (the windward boat gives way) and meekly turned away.
This time we held our course, sailing as close as we could to what little wind there was, forcing Grayhound to sail even closer to the wind so that she lost speed. After a tense few minutes when the finely-costumed pirates on Grayhound’s deck seemed almost on top of us, they gave up and tacked away.
In fairness, there was so little wind that a vessel of Grayhound’s weight was doing well to move at all. We left them and Barnabas far behind but still took two hours to reach the windward mark under St Anthony Head, where the race was declared over.
We came first in all three races, each of myself, Peter and Chris helming one and Bart doing sterling work on the sheets.
Guiding Star had a fine berth at the corner of the two outside pontoons in Falmouth Haven and it was fun to be chosen as the stage for the Rum and Shrub Shantymen. Shrub is a strong-tasting mixture of alcohol, sugar, citrus juice and spices which Cornwall’s eighteenth-century smugglers brewed to disguise the taste of rum which had gone salty from being stashed in leaky barrels under the sea. You can still buy a commercially-made shrub from Sevenstones or you can cook your own.
We just had time before the shantymen struck up to hang Guiding Star’s For Sale banner above their heads hoping to catch the eye of the crowds milling around with their beer and pasties on the pontoon.
A painting of our boats on the pontoon is now hanging on someone’s wall! Artist Clare Bowen painted two pictures and submitted them for the Royal Society of Marine Artists’ annual exhibition at the Mall Galleries in September. One was accepted and has already sold.
I spent Saturday and Sunday afternoons up the mast fitting a new VHF antenna, seizing the chance that Peter started his career as a radio operator and knew exactly what to solder onto what. But on Monday afternoon on the way to Fowey when we hoisted the topsail with the wind behind us, the yard risked banging against the antenna bracket so once back in Plymouth I went up again to move it to the other side of the mast.
We arrived in Fowey as we often seem to do right in the middle of evening racing by the Fowey River class dinghies (15′) and the bigger Troy class boats (18′). The coloured sails make a magnificent sight but there are a lot of boats to avoid when you’re picking up a buoy. It’s different if you’re Border Force on a mission: a RIB full of tough-looking types in black helmets and flak jackets roared straight through the race to board a dodgy-looking big yacht on the buoy next to us.
Many thanks indeed to Chris, Peter and Bart for a wonderful week’s sailing, and for several of these photographs.
Guiding Star Looe Lugger 1907 