Longobarda
Quite a few years ago I sent some
time sailing on a yacht called Longobarda. Longobarda
is/was an 80 ft maxi
yacht built purely for racing. I don’t have any of my own photos but you can
see from the ones I have downloaded from the internet that she looks fast,
basically like an 80ft surfboard with a massive rig on top.
One of the most enjoyable sails I
had on her (actually one of the best of my life) was during a trip from
Southampton to Dublin. The trip itself took a few days and there was a crew of
about 8 of us split down into 2 man watches. Normally to race the boat there
would be over 20 crew, but for a delivery you don’t need as many. As I was the
youngest and most junior member of the crew I was on watch with the most senior
member – the Skipper – and a watch would last for two hours.
On about the second or third day of
the trip I was on the dawn watch which started in the dark but got
progressively lighter as the sun began to rise. We had rounded the tip of
Cornwall (Lands End) and were headed directly towards Dublin, we were
broad-reaching (when the wind is diagonally behind the boat) and we were flying
along surfing down some fairly large rollers. I remember the skipper decided to
go down to the cabin to check the charts for a while leaving me on my own on
the deck. The feeling was incredible, just me at the wheel with almost 80ft of
empty deck in front of me, surfing down waves with spray jetting out on both
sides of the yacht. Because Longobarda was built for racing she was incredibly
agile, just a slight tweak of the wheel would instantly change the direction
which made it easy to keep her surfing on the waves, it was like being in
charge of a huge dingy. Like I say one of the best few minutes of sailing I’ve
had.
On the flip side that trip also
bore witness to some tragedy which was felt throughout the global sailing
community. I remember being shaken awake in my cot by the skipper, there was
lots of activity below decks and up top. We had received a mayday call and it
was looking like we would be the first on the scene. We heard that a 30ft yacht
within the vicinity had a ‘man-over-board’ and we were on route to try and
help. By the time we reached the yacht the coast guard helicopter had arrived
and was beginning to co-ordinate the search and rescue effort. It’s amazing how
quickly you can lose site of someone when they fall into a rough sea and it
turned out that the remaining crew of 2 on board the stricken yacht were very
inexperienced and they themselves were in need of assistance in addition to
their friend in the water.
As more and more info came in it
became clear that the person who had fallen overborad was a man called EricTabarly. For those that don’t know, Eric Tabarly is a sailing legend. He is one
of Frances most successful sailors (and France is a country that really values
their sailors, as the sport is much more popular there than in the UK). It
seemed amazing that a man who had sailed singlehandedly round the world, won a
number of the biggest prizes in yachting and held the transatlantic sailing
record could be in trouble just a few miles of the coast of Cornwall, but he
was, and we spent the next few hours sailing a grid to try and find him.
Unfortunately, the rescue effort
was unsuccessful and his body was found by a trawler about a month later. I
like to think he had an amazing 66 years on the planet, sailing in some of the world
most epic seas and reaching the pinnacle of an extremely competitive sport.
