Schooner Magic

Tom Cunliffe Joins the Crew of the 135ft Schooner Eleonora for the Caribbean 600 Race
 

- Tom Cunliffe

One of the great wonders of sailing is that, no matter how wide our experience or how long we’ve been at sea, none of us has seen it all. Take me, for example. When asked, I generally say that an extended life on the water has put me at the helm of everything from a Firefly dinghy to a square-rigged ship and filled in most of the gaps between, but at the end of February this year, I rediscovered the schooner.

The first boat I sailed for a living was the schooner Hindu out of Province town, Massachusetts. Designed for the Bermuda Races, she gave me a good start. Later I served aboard a working trader, then it was Olin Stephens’s 1930s masterpiece Brilliant under the late Captain George Moffett. Fine vessels all, but none prepared me for the impact of sailing aboard Eleonora in the RORC Caribbean 600 race.

Eleonora was launched in 2000. She is a straight replica of the 135ft, 214 ton Herreshoff schooner Westward. Under the command of her Scottish captain, Charlie Barr, Westward swept across the Atlantic in 1910 to take 11 1sts in 11 starts against the smartest Europe could produce.

This is Eleonora’s heritage. She was born to race, but sprints around the cans mean an exhausting workout for crews handling spinnakers and golly wobblers the size of a supermarket car park; the boat is hardly into her stride before the interesting sails are dropped for the next beat.

The RORC Caribbean 600 is different. The race could have been dreamed up for schooners. Set across the north-east trade winds among the islands around Antigua, it features reaches up to 150 miles long, a beat or two and the odd run that, with luck, shouldn’t be too extended.