BAY AREA SAILORS B
ay Area sailors Harmon Shragge, Mike Crandall and Dustin Wanco competed in this year's Rolex Fastnet Race aboard the VO65 Sisi, owned by the Austrian Ocean Race Project. The boat was
arguing with each other about not letting each country's sailors touch foot in the other's country (the race began off
We said, "Of course." He dropped us off; I got a beer and met a Clipper Race friend. Within three minutes I received a call that we had to get off the island right away. The water taxi was returning to pick us up immediately. I finished my beer and ran madly to meet the tender, which waited for me. We got back to the boat, and luckily we did not get in trouble. At least I got a beer.
K
raken Travel in England brought together a crew of 13 (five Americans, three Italians, one Swiss, German, Austrian, Irish and a Swede; three of them women) and put them under the leadership of Sisi's supervising crew of three (skipper Gerwin Jensen, first mate Oliver Kobale and bowman Daniel Gaw). Mike Crandall was ecstatic with the professionalism and all-around great attitude of the supervising crew. "Beginning with our first day of practice, we all gelled right away and the crew gave us the confidence to get right to work and to sail the boat to our highest ability. We were allowed to participate in any way we could, including helming, sail trim and changes. But when the boat's head got clogged, you know who we called." Helming a VO65 and taking her to a
'Sisi', photographed from a helicopter on the second day of the race, passing the Lizard Lighthouse and Land's End.
christened after the extremely popular Austrian Queen Elizabeth, who went by the nickname 'Sisi' and reigned in the late 1800s. Sisi (the boat) was the former Vestas in the Volvo Ocean Race 2017-18. This is not the hull that ran aground in the Indian Ocean; it's the one that collided with a fishing boat outside Hong Kong. Readers may remember that Mike and I (Harmon) were in the process of sailing from Subic Bay to Seattle with the Clipper Round the World Race in March 2020 when we were quarantined and the race was aborted. The Fastnet is the biggest offshore race in the world (this year marked the 49th biennial edition), and it was not about to be canceled due to COVID. Pre-Delta variant craziness, 450 boats were registered. By the time France and England stopped 0AGE s Latitude
38 s 3EPTEMBER
Cowes, UK, and finished in Cherbourg, France), starters were whittled down to just under 350. Due to heavy weather during the first 24 hours of the race, fewer than 180 boats completed the extended 695-mile course. I did set foot in Cowes. We left Cherbourg at noon the Saturday before the race and arrived in Cowes by 4 p.m. We moored the boat, and the skipper said we could take a water taxi to Cowes. The French and British had just made a deal to relax the restrictions and would allow English sailors to set foot in France. But those restrictions would be lifted Sunday morning. Of course, we thought that Saturday night would be OK. So the water taxi pulled up, and six of us headed into Cowes. The water taxi driver knew we had just come from France and asked us if we had permission to go onto land in England.
HARMON SHRAGGE
BILL LYONS
August 7 in the English Channel, transiting from Cherbourg, France, to Cowes on the Isle of Wight, when the waves and the weather hit.
