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Four of this Round The Island Race team joined us for this, the first of two RTI training weekends.

After a curry on board we headed off to the Clarence for a pint or two, and a chance to get to know each other. Two of the team ( Damian and John M) had been down a couple of weeks ago for the ISAF Offshore Safety Course ( part of our Fastnet Campaign), with Rupert (a friend of Damian’s) and Carol (repeat RTI crew from last year) joining me and my wife Helen for the weekend.

After a sausage sarnie for breakfast we got stuck into the safety and deck briefings before prepping the boat for sea. After lunch the breeze and tide enabled us to have a few hours practicing in the harbour working through tacks and gybes with “white sails” up. We also changed from the Heavy Weather Jib on the inner forestay to the roller-reefing Genoa and moved things up a gear or two by introducing the running-backstays.

After putting the boat to bed for the day we headed over to Landers for steaks and burgers, and to chat through the days tasks.

Sunday morning saw getting to grips with the spinnaker gear – one carbon fibre spinnaker pole and 6 more ropes than the day before! After running through where to lead the sheets and guys we re-packed the kites ready for their first hoist.

With light winds all day, we stayed firmly attached to the pontoon, but that didn’t stop us working through 10 kite sets, 10 drops and 20 or so gybes using symmetrical and assymetric spinnakers – well done folks!

All in all a great weekend that will serve us well for the Round The Island Race itself.

Our new sails are due with us early in March. Some of the Fastnet Team (and John McIntyre) joining us for the test sail on the 18^th March when Paul from Hyde Sails will join us to ensure they fit properly.

Prime Evil now has her inner forestay fitted so we are ready to go with “modern” racing – roller-reefing Genoa and Heavy Weather Jib.

For those of you who haven’t been sailing for a while, we still have spaces on both of our Race Training / Sail Handling Weekends. As race crew with us, you get these weekends at the reduced rate of £180 saving £60 off the normal price. The first weekend is from the evening of the 15^th through to the afternoon of the 17^th April and the second is from the evening of the 6^th through to the afternoon of the 8^th May. The weekends are a chance for crew to refresh and develop their skills prior to joining us for RTI, allowing them to get more out of the race weekend itself.

…….2000 or so other boats will be making their way from berths all around the Solent early on on the 25th June – all taking part in a unique race. With one of the highest number of participants for any UK sporting event, it is a mix of world class sailors and “weekend warriors” out for their one race of the year.

On board Prime Evil, we fall somewhere in the middle – a crew of 12 with a wide range of sailing experience and aspirations. This year we have one of our Fastnet Crew with their Dad and brother, the official reserve for our Fastnet Crew, a dinghy sailor, a crew member off another Fastnet campaigner, two who had to pull out of this years Fastnet due to a mix of “The Big C” and redundancy, and two ex-Clipper Round The World Race crew.

3 crew need to confirm their places by the end of Feb, so if you are tempted drop us a line john@wetstuff.org.uk

More crew details and news from our Race Training / Sail Handling weekends to follow in due course. In the meantime new sails are on their way along with the regular maintenance programme.

Photos from the 2010 Race courtesy of Wetstuff and 2007 photos from sailingscenes.co.uk