Two weeks to go! How it all started.

We have less than two weeks to go before the start of the big race! There is still much to do but we do seem to be making progress day by day. Lists are posted everywhere and then yet more lists appear.

The idea of entering the “Round Britain Powerboat Race 2008” came about back in February over dinner with friends, Tony Jenvey and Tim Kary who had both entered their boats in the race and after a few bottles of wine, it seemed like a good idea to enter too. My good friend, Yoyo Schepers and her husband have an 8.5 metre RIB and before the end of the evening Yoyo and I had shaken hands on doing the race together. Not knowing much about it, I looked at the website the following morning and with a slightly hung-over haze saw to my horror what this race entailed. 9 days a sea, bouncing through rough seas in a small RIB – sounded like hell.

Originally we thought we should do just a few legs but we were promptly told by the boys that this was extremely wimpy and if we were going to do it, we should do it properly. It was at this point that Yoyo’s husband went off the idea of letting us use their RIB. I then began my search for another RIB and a few days later Patrick Byrne of Scorpion RIBs made contact with me. His email “if you have not got anything yet, it may be worth a chat” prompted an immediate visit to the yard. A couple of days later we had a fantastic RIB.

Yoyo had been training for the Polar Challenge for the past 4 months and she was soon off on her amazing race to the North Pole. Thoughts of racing RIBs around Britain were in the back of her mind and she couldn’t commit to anything until she was back from her race. I needed another girl to come along and Miranda was the obvious choice. We have known each other since we were about 16, both at school in London and both from sailing families. Our weekends and holidays were always spent on the water either cruising or racing. In our late teens and early twenties, we did lots of offshore yacht racing and were often at the same regattas. Miranda became a professional yachty and skippered boats in the Caribbean and the Mediterranean. We both moved to Lymington about 10 years ago with our families and are still good mates. I’m sure we will have huge fun doing this race but most importantly, we trust each other with our boat handling and navigation skills. Yoyo is now back from the North Pole have very successfully completed the race and will be our reserve.

Bye for now

Sarah