The Night Owl

arthurpenet
Jul 28, 2017
7 min read

Sunday the 2nd of October 2016. I have been settled in Southampton for one week. When I say settled I mean that I am generously hosted by Kévin & Gayé, friends of a friend. I started my lectures at Uni and I am already a bit lost. My brain struggle to switch into English… Anyway, Sunday morning in October, 7:30am. What the **** am I doing on a car park at that time?! That’s obvious! No?!

Dressed with my sailing trousers and boots, my bag pack on my shoulder, ready to sail, I walk around and ask everybody who looks like a sailor: “Hi! I am Arthur, I am French. I just arrived in Southampton and I am looking for a crew to sail with? Can you help me? After I went asking some people, I hear my name shouted in perfect French from the pontoons. It’s Charlotte, a French embarked with an English crew on board of Night owl II, a lovely and powerful 12 meters long yacht, designed by the design office Mills Design and built by the yacht yard M.A.T in Izmir, Turquey. Lucky me! I start my first day sailing in the Solent with Night Owl II.

This is how my sailing year in Soton started, with a joyful crew, composed with Julie, Nicky, Oksana, Charlotte, Maggie, Jess, Andrew, Simon, the two Adams, Toby, Brad, James, Ed, Paul, Steve and Tim, just to mention the one I have had the chance to sail with. After a few hours sailing together I understood I had found a crew which suited me. Why? When I wanted to sail in England, it was to learn how to sail in English and in the Solent and to learn the sailing vocabulary which I only knew in French. When I started sailing on Night Owl I could not stop asking “how do you call this and this? How do you say when you are doing this manoeuvre?” and instead of being fed up with my thousand questions, the Night Owl crew took the time to teach me so many words and expressions which allow me to sail anywhere in the world thanks to my English speaking in sailing! I even know what “monkey nuts” means now! (“cat nuts” for the French sailors!). Thanks to them, in just a few regattas in the Solent I learn how to sail in the language of Shakespeare and I start to appreciate this crew who welcomed me on board without knowing me and who trusted me.

Later in the season, we were having one of our traditional post-regatta debriefings – imagine a bunch of tired and salted sailors seating around a table and drinking beers sharing their appreciation of the regatta, their impressions, and trying to progress together. During this debriefing, Andrew and Julie offered me to be part of the permanent crew of Night Owl II. This was an amazing offer! I have to explain to you that the Night Owl crew is a syndicate of people who share the expenses of the racing project of the boat by participating financially every month. As a student I cannot afford such an investment so we first agreed with Julie that when there was some room on bard for me I was most welcome but people from the Syndicate would have the priority on me. They offered me to be part of the syndicate, accepting the fact that I was a student and we agreed on the fact that I would participate the way I can by helping on the preparation of the boat and committing as much as I can in the project. With this offer I was part of the crew! I felt very grateful that day. Of course I accepted! But as the Masters was becoming more and more intense and let me less time to sail, I dared to ask them a favour: instead of being part of the Inshore crew, which meant sailing every week-end, I asked them if I could enter the Offshore crew and participate some famous races in the Channel like the Rolex Fastnet Race. Guess what?... They accepted!

Later, when Ed, the skipper of the offshore team asked me my sailing experience and qualifications and I realised that without knowing how useful it would be I learnt many things last year sailing on Mini 6.50s and passing the Sea Survival and First Aid at Sea.

As a member of the offshore team, I participated my first race of the season which brought us from Cowes to Le Havre in my motherland on the 29th of April. On board, Ed, Andrew, Paul, Nicky, Simon (alias Smithy), Oksana whom we all call Oksy, Steve, Ti and I…

Saturday morning. 6:00am, we all gather on the pontoon and prepare the boat to leave at 7am. At about 7:10 we cast off. Smithy and Steve push the boat and jump on board. After a few meters, the boat stops… the engine is running and Ed pushes it to full power but we realise that we are stuck in the mud of the marina because of the low tide… Despite all our attempts to heel the boat to move the keel up nothing moves. We have been had like beginners by the low tide whereas we planned to cast off early for this reason! Therefore we stayed in the Marina, waiting for the tide to come up and free us from the mud. One hour later… we are moving! Ed revs the engine and we all run on one side of the deck to heel the boat. This is how we left the Marina that day. Haha!

One hour later, we arrive in front of Cowes, ready for the Cervantes Trophy surrounded by our 12 competitors and other boats from different categories. How position on the start line is good. We are in the top 5. Then we aim to the mark which is in front of Littlehampton, toward the West before taking and aiming to France…

One of my wishes when I decided to sail more offshore races with Night Owl was to learn a bit more how to use the routing and weather forecast tools. Routing is extremely important in sailing as it helps the skipper take the decision of the sails to have on board and the route we will do, taking into the winds, the tide and the boat performances. It is really interesting because in order to do it well, one has to gather weather data from different models (GFS, GEM and others) to compare them and consider several scenarios. Then one has to be aware of the sea currents and the tide time to know how the mass of water on which we are sailing is moving within the race. Processing all these pieces of information increases our chances to sail faster to France. I offered to help Ed on this task and we prepared the routing the day before the race, keeping in mind that weather can change at any time, especially when the weather is unstable and stormy… Anyway, we had a idea of what we wanted to do but stayed ready to adapt any change if needed.

And our strategy worked well apparently! Globally, we sailed a shorter distance than many of our competitors and above all we used the sea current to go faster. Indeed we let the current push us from east to west then from west to east without resisting, prioritising speed. When we cross the line at about 1am everybody is happy on board. We go and celebrate into the “Société de Régates du Havre” with litters of beer until the early morning!

After a restful night and a lovely French breakfast we cast off and sail back to England in a nice breeze. I take the first night watch with Steve and Tim while the others are going to bed. I am helming. We are sailing with full mainsail as the sail is stuck in the mast rail and we can’t reef it despite the wind is getting stronger. In the middle of the night, I am helming and surfing on the waves in gusts up to 28 knots (50km/h, which is a lot on the sea!), downwind (110° from apparent wind), and the boat reaches pick speeds of 13 knots (25km/h, which is also fast for a 12m long monohull). I feel so good helming and playing in the waves without forgetting to pay attention to the cargo ships as we are crossing the Channel which is a really busy maritime route linking Northern Europe to the rest of the world.

The crossing ends early in the morning when we arrive in the Solent. The wind calmed down and the main sail accepts to slide along the mast. Our week-end ends up as usual at the Ketch Rigger where we can debrief and share a breakfast together.

What do I take from this race? Let’s start with the positive points. I realised that I was quite efficient while manoeuvring at any time in the race, for a headsail change or to take a reef in the main. As long as I have some energy I feel useful on board. But when came the tiredness after a few hours sailing, I got seasick and were not as efficient at helping others sailing. I had to go sleeping and I fully recovered only when I was given the wheel. I notice that management of tiredness and water and food is something I have to understand and handle better in order to progress.

Since that race, we did the Cowes-St Malo race together and I also sailed the Channel race with another crew. We learnt a lot sailing together and even if we can still progress, we know and trust each other and are ready to bring the Night Owl to the Fastnet rock on the 6th of August.