Catch as Ketch can

Sailing out of Whitehaven early Saturday morning as crew with Dave and Mark on Hank's 'Panhelion' . Sleepy-eyed we trundled our gear and Dave's folding bbq, down the pontoon, to stow food in the galley and sleeping bags in the cabins, before the briefing.
The race was on, with the winner being the first one over the line at Ross Island on the other side of the Solway. 
We motored through the sealock, raised the mainsail and unfurled the genoa to practise some tacks and gybes and then got off to a good start with the wind behind us.
Hank's plan was that we would be able to pole out two genoas and sail goose-winged all the way to Scotland, but this all went a bit pear shaped! I took the helm and for the next half hour the lads wrestled with attaching the poles and setting the foresails. Like unruly lengths of scaffolding the poles bucked and twisted, as the genoas backed and flopped. The tracking up the mast was not holding the pole end and every few minutes it popped out, whipping across like a giant corn flail, until in desperation Hank got out the drill, and hanging on by his toes, bored a hole through it for a new holding pin.  Whew!

 Amazingly though we were still holding our own with the rest of the fleet and as we resigned ourselves to sailing with just the one foresail we found ourselves slowly gaining on the nearest vessels. Here we are passing the ketch!
Then, what had been a haze, slowly curdled into fog and the perimeter of the world shrank. Sailing the course by compass gave us all crick in the neck. In a couple more hours we knew we must be close to Ross Island and its two light houses that, in transect, were the finishing line. A faint grey edge to the cotton wool showed briefly and there, shadowy, but spot on, was Scotland. We had made it in good time and what's more, we came in a commendable second.
Time to find the cove and roll out that BBQ!