Shmoking Joe is a replacement for the J 90 hull # 1 Joe 90, which since its launch in 1998 had achieved massive success. Sadly a dehumidifier fire caused massive structural damage to Joe 90 last Autumn.
The late delivery of the J 111's meant that the boats maiden regatta kept changing until 10 days ago, it seemed just possible that she would make the Round the Island race which would run on June 25th.
J Composite told us to send the truck in to collect the boat on the 22nd which would result in a delivery to Hamble on Thursday 23rd giving us 2 days to fit electronics and rig and commission her. Then on Wednesday a new problem: the boat was ready the trucker was not. Delayed on another job he would only arrive at the Yard in Les Sables after normal business hours on the 22nd. The yard stepped in and stayed late to get her loaded, ready to roll on Thursday at first light.
With new wide load restrictions in place in France, the trip to the ferry port in Caen took all day Thursday, so we now had a new eta at Hamble of 0700 Friday. This ratcheted up the pressure another few notches.
Pacing the yard like a bunch of expectant fathers at 7 the next morning were the Commissioning team, not knowing that the hauliers had one more delay for us... they had to change tractor units and finally rolled in the door at 8 am. This was 21 hours before she would have to leave the dock for the start of the race.
Now the experience of all involved kicked in, under the watchful eye of Duncan Mcdonald one of the two owners, the Tacktick transducer was mounted with the boat on the truck and in the water she went. The engine fired, the Volvo guys jumped on to inspect and the rig was stepped and dock tuned, 8 guys worked hard that day to install, commission, calibrate, test and inspect.
It went well: the rigging lengths were millimeter perfect, the mast wedge was a little on the tight side, the Tacktick gear fired up first time.
At 4pm after an 8 hr shift we were ready for the sails. 5pm as planned a week earlier, we left the dock on the maiden voyage, to find 20 knots in Southampton Water up went the main.... Perfect fit, then the J3 and we were off. Duncan on the helm, his longtime friend and shipmate Kevin Sproul monitoring the sails produced by his Ultimate loft.
How's the rig Kev? It looks great on starboard, lets check it on port. How's it look on port Kev, perfect. What?? No change required? No the tune put on the dock is absolutely bang on!
6.30 back on the dock, ace electrical Paul Knights was waiting for us with a new chart plotter that had been rushed down from Winchester. Plug her in fire it up. Bingo we are now ready to race.
8pm co owner and fellow medic Phil Thomas arrives from the operating theatre with the safety gear. The team retire to the bar or bed !
RACE DAY- The forecast was showing a 20-25 knot South Westerly, off the dock at 5:15 motor 100 yds.. Where is the navigator? He was first on board at 4.30 now he's gone missing, back in to the dock to the amusement of our fellow J sailors. Robin ambles down, we hustle him on board, gun it and go.
Duncan makes the introductions, not only a brand new boat but a bunch of people that have not sailed together, however it is a strong team. Duncan allocated the roles, Kevin is to helm for the start and the first part of the beat.
Putting our nose round Calshot and entering the Solent it is clear that the forecast is correct, Kevin calls for the code 3 jib and the code 3 spinnaker, these would be the sails we use all day.
Racing in the Solent, playing the tide is critical, and as ever on this race you want to start in the favourable tide which is strongest on the island Shore.
There are several hundred boats on the start line a great many of them much larger than us. Kevin won us a nice front row start, however not wanting to get gassed by the bigger faster-to-windward boats we initially played the middle of the course trading some tidal advantage for clean air.
Making good progress in the front 10-15% of the fleet, a huge bang resulted in the jib dropping half a metre, as the mast foot halyard block exploded and disappeared. Stuart Miller our commissioning guru had expressed his view that the 6mm pins were inadequate, I had given him my light-boat=light-loads response. Stuart was correct. We re-reeved the halyard through the reef line block and set out to regain the 3 or 4 places lost in the incident. We clamped vise grips to the jib and main halyard blocks to prevent them splaying and a re-occurrence.
Fast progress was made on the beat down the Solent and as the traffic thinned we started to make progress on the pack of 39-43 footers that surrounded us, we arrived at the Needles about 10th of our group.
Bearing away for St Catherines point, the wind was now blowing the forecast 25kts and at 110 true, too far forward for a kite, so with the jib on an outboard lead we set off with the boat-speed around 12 knots.
Moving away from the Needles a bay opens up, we expected that this topography would allow the wind to back in addition to allowing more sea room to drive off in the puffs.
The code 3 spi was set the crew was shuffled aft and we took off, sailing at 140 true was as hot as we could go, the layline for St Catherines point was marginal. Spinnakers went up on the boats in front, at least on those equipped with A sails. Shmoking Joe was now full living up to her name smoking through our own fleet as well as the sportsboats and the slower end of the multihulls and larger IRC boats that had started ahead of us.
Kevin was giving a masterclass of downwind steering when he started to complain about slack in the steering system, yes the brand new cables were stretching in. Hanging upside down in the lazarette whilst the boat is doing 17 knots, trying to adjust cables on a rapidly moving quadrant is a great new game, throw in the fact that there is not enough room to use a normal length spanner makes the game impossible. Those lock nuts could not be moved. Wedging a small spanner between the lock nuts and the quadrant and taping it in place, reduced the play sufficiently to make the helmsman happy.
Less than half the course gone and 2 vise grips and a spanner in permanent use, the tool-bag is starting to look empty!
Being unable to weather St Catherines and with a closing speed of 15 knots we doused the chute with half a mile to go, heading up onto a 2 sail reach it felt like we were parked, yep we are down to a miserly 12 knots.
We expected the wind to accelerate around the point and were not disappointed. 25 became 30 and as we bore away it came much further aft.
Just as we were about to re-hoist, a trimaran pitchpoled a 100 metres to weather, as the closest boat we radioed a Mayday, whilst in dialogue with the coastguard, a spectator RIB arrived and took over the situation so we were free to blast on. Now able to sail at a TWA of 155 and with the extra pressure of 30 knots we took off, long bursts of the high teens were capped by a 22.5 peak, just a tenth slower than I had seen on the J 111 sistership Arabella. We absolutely smoked past all around, nobody passed us.
It was very much on the edge sailing and fantastic fun, we broached three times in total, blowing the spi halyard got us back on our feet and we were able to re-hoist and carry on each time.
At this stage we were pretty sure that we were leading our class, as we rounded the leeward mark at Bembridge we were in company with an Oyster 82, a Class 40 and some big multihulls, all of which had started before us.
The leg from Bembridge into the Solent was a flat water fetch, the wind was still in the 20's. Hardening up for the 7 mile beat home, we traded tacks with a 28 ft tri and stepped away from a class 40. We could see the second boat in our fleet Tokoloshe some 5 minutes behind and knew that she would be eating into our lead and so it proved, Tokoloshe finished 3 minutes behind us which increased to 10 minutes when the handicaps were applied.
Upon arriving ashore we found that we had won both our class and our 125 boat group and initially were lying 3rd overall sandwiched between 2 TP 52's. Later in the day, as the small boats arrived carrying favourable tide, a Contessa 26 took the top prize and we were shuffled down to 6th out of the whole IRC fleet of 450 boats. A very good maiden race.
Now we can get the boat out of the water, do the bottom job, have here weighed and measured for an endorsed rating and look forward to more high octane days. Cheers, Paul Heys
