Mast down

Rob Crabbe recalls the rig of a new yacht breaking on a delivery trip from Dartmouth to the Southampton Boat Show

- Rob Crabbe

When I was at university in the mid-1990s, young and undoubtedly invincible, I used to do a few deliveries along the south coast. My Dad had worked with a company in Totnes who imported yachts from the manufacturer in France and, using that connection, they used to get me to go and bring the partexchange boats from where they were moored back to the yard on the Dart.

This was generally done with my friend, Jeff, who I’d met at university. Like me, he was completely indestructible so the thought of being dropped off at some south coast port on a Friday night with some food and keys to a completely unknown boat to get back as soon as possible didn’t make him bat an eyelid.

One thing that didn’t happen often though was the chance to sail one of the new boats; as you can imagine, the new owners of most of them were keen to sail them home for the first time.

So when the opportunity to sail a brand-new 31-footer from Dartmouth to Southampton in late August for the boat show we thought...brilliant! The boat was shiny and we expected a fast trip.

So we set off about 1800 on a Friday night – wind was south, south-westerly about Force 4, and actually stayed that way (not that we really bothered to take notice of forecasts or tidal gates or whatever). We were doing a three-hour (ish) rotation and thoroughly enjoying ourselves.

We had a quick trip across Lyme Bay, sticking on a starboard gybe all the way, but then got stuck a bit too close inshore off Portland so hardened-up and headed out more south-easterly around 0200-ish to avoid the overfalls.