In the Pits

Being midsummer, dawn was very early this morning, and the sky never got completely dark, almost as if the night never really arrived. After another sleepless night working flat out in the yard in Middlesex, the skipper got into the cab of the artic, followed by the rest of the crew and left to go to Portsmouth for the start of the Round Britain Race 2008.

This is not something we imagined ever happening two weeks ago, because then we were ready to bale out and give up, there seemed to be just too much work to do in time.

"That's racing!" as everyone says, but it's shorthand for the frustrations, despair, mixed with joy and elation as the list of our acheivements waxes and wanes. The preparations for this particular race are no different from anyone elses, apart from having to do all the engineering ourselves, our navigator is chief engineer, skipper and throttle man are working flat out too, our team manager has his sleeves rolled up and no one has been home for ages, but what makes it possible to keep going is the team, and knowing that they are relying on you to do your best.

Despite our huge efforts over several nights with almost no sleep, on arrival at Portsmouth we still had not finished all the work we needed to do, and by 9 o'clock at night the steering was still not working.

Part of the happiness of being involved with this famous race is that it brings out the best in people, who are so helpful and interested. One of the people that made it possible for us to even get in the water, and if we are honest, the person who really made it possible was, Martin the hydraulics genius from Pirtek from Reading. He came all the way down to help us and without him we not not have got as far as the fuel station. Was working on a tractor belonging to someone in the Royal Family but kindly thought our project was more interesting.

Before Marin arrived we had no no steering or trim or trim tabs, and Martin worked like a titan, getting completely filthy climbing around our grubby boat. The cure for part of the problem was to bleed the pipes, by sucking hydraulic oil out, so he was only helper so far, who in return for his efforts actually got a drink out of it...

Team Bandit turned up and made us cups of tea; they are doing the race for charity, and apparenty have never been to sea apart from on Channel ferries, so our thanks and good luck to them.

Once the steering was fixed and we had sorted out the electronics, the boat was safely tucked up at Port Solent and we made it to our hotels and got a couple of hours sleep before the fuelling at 6am.

Despite only a handful of hours sleep in the past week, the skipper is looking the business in his race overalls.

At 6am the boat was fired up and moved slowly to the fuel station, an astonishing noise the engines make, like instant thunder. (at the end of this diary entry there is a video, with a bit of sound) I can imagine that everyone in the marina would have been woken up by the sound, so we are sorry, but you get to have a nap this afternoon, it's Saturday after all, and we are going to be battling the sea in a tin box at 70 miles an hour before our heads touch pillows again tonight at who-knows-what time in Plymouth.

There was a great feeling of excitement and anticipation before the race, despites some hoo har about the deposits for the satellite tracking system, which were so generously sorted by another competitor, who we still don't know. This kind of great gesture embodies the spirit of this race, a quality of brotherhood (okay, and sisterhood) which is missing from most other sports now.

We boat got into the lock in the nick of time to get round to Gunwharf Keys to get some breakfast, and we left the Tim, Nik and Eric alone with 558 for the first time to drive round to watch them arrive at the muster area.

Crew's Notes "We first realised there was something really wrong just at the point when we were anticipating opening the throttles outside of the speed limits. On tickover, it does nearly 6 knots, going past the moorings not to disturb them we stayed on idle, then just past, the limit is 10 knots and as the throttles opened, only one engine would rev; the other engine's revs stayed on tickover, so there was no way of getting onto the plane.

Initially we thought it would be someting simple like a fuel line, so one of us leaned over and saw that one of the fuel cocks was half off, then the revs felt went up for a couple of seconds and then went back to idle, but that might have been wishful thinking, and that was that.

We took her out into the Solent to get a look at the start, at least, and tried a bit to get up onto the plane on one engine, but the other was holding her back and we knew at that point we had to go back to the pits.

People on shore told us that the saw us with no helmets and knew we were in trouble because we were going so slowly.

Back in the pits on Gunwharf Keys a frantic full team effort effort was on to fix the boat so we could get out within the our to be valid race starters. The team manager set off in the pursuit car chasing around industrial units, old colleauges came out of the woodwork to help us, to encourage us and to get us motivated to keep on. We eventually got in touch with Ilmore in America, and tried to analyse the symptons by phone, dragging the poor man out of his bed at 5am. After the hour clicked round and we were no closer to solving the problem, we settled down to doing some diagnostics with an ODB2 reader, and found the fault codes were all very odd, and could not find the translation. The whole of the fuel lines were checked, along with just about everything else. Imor worked all day to help find the problem, after loads of effort, tired and hungry, we decided to set off for Plymouth by road to at least get ready to show up for the start of the next leg.

For a roundup of the days events from someone else's point of view
http://www.ybw.com/auto/newsdesk/20080521180356mbynews.html At this point we don't know whether the Plymouth to Milford Haven leg will even take place - there are warnings of severe gales in Lundy, and even if we could go out and play in the surf, we would not be allowed to, not in the context of the race, anyway.

Crew: Looking back through the day, as soon as we got into the sea lock there was a hit of adrenalnt, and I was starting to enjoy being out. Although we never went very far or fast, we were totally amazed by the way 558 handled the wash from other boats, steady as a rock, like a true thoroughbred, and in contrast we could see huge cruisers lurching in the same wakes.

3 days ago we were ready to throw in the towel, there was still to much engineering to do, so we have made an incredible achievement just getting the boat running and in the water.

Gunwharf keys was great fun, the boat was attracting so much attention, crowds gathered and stepped back in awe when the engines started. The point of the boat is to show off our engireering expertise and our teamship, and to give the bystanders a bit of a thrill, we'll save the hairing about at sea for another day.

So many people we know came to see us, it was amazing that they bothered to come all that way; we were bought coffees and food and were so well looked after, we were in a pickle but we were buoyed up by the amazing kindness of family, friends and complete strangers.

After the highs and lows of preparation we felt we had to be there at the start; the morning was very exciting, getting fuellled up, and although it is a bit of a blow not to be out there but there is not point being upset, the whole point of the race is to take part, and although the boat, crew and support team were highly stressed, the only thing that actually went "twang" was the boat, the teamwork, endurance and patience of everyone involved was a wonderful thing.