The start of this season is a tale of two boats with DMS Vinyl, a 50ft DazCat built out of Millbrook, shouldering Oddity aside as we work her up for a season of racing.

Oddity is still on the hard as we have been caught up in the process of remaking the rudders for better balance and ticking off a few other jobs including replacement of a cracked window. All that remains is to remove the Webasto heater and pop it into the dealer for a bench service and run up. I have ordered a South and West Coast of Ireland pilot, for that is where we fancy cruising this summer.
Time to get her in the water, methinks.

The long-term plan for DMS Vinyl is to compete alongside Dave Summers, the owner, in next year’s two-handed Azores and back Race, otherwise known as the AZAB. It’s one of those races that I have always wanted to do but have never found the planets lining up.

My father took me to see a start as a boy and I think that’s where it initially got under my skin. Over time I have watched it grow into an international race that caters for the full spectrum of entries from serious competitors to adventurers in run-of-the-mill boats. I am told the camaraderie is amazing and with a stop in the beautiful Azores it has a social element that many ocean races lack.

Starting and finishing in Falmouth, it has a unique Cornish character and the Royal Cornwall Yacht Club is looking to expand the shoreside activities to draw in a wider public audience. To this end there will be a schools programme and an open festival day on Saturday 5 June 2027, prior to the off on Sunday 6 June.

At 50ft, DMS Vinyl is a big boat and best described as a racer-cruiser for she leans into the performance arena but at the same time maintains a degree of comfort. Built in Cornwall by Multimarine she has quite the pedigree and is a pleasure to sail. Dave and I are strangers to her ways, so earlier in the year we decided to blow the winter cobwebs out, put her through her paces and start to build our confidence and knowledge bank.

It’s quite the gear shift from Oddity with her gaff rig and everything held in place by lacing and heavier lashings. On DMS Vinyl we are looking at mast locks, a raft of deck jammers and a range of free-furling sails. With Starlink we have amazing communications which enable the latest in forecasting and routing software. Every time we go sailing all information is sucked into a database to continually hone real world polar curves. Amongst other things we have load cells on the rigging and so information nudges aside the simple but often underrated gut feel and instinct that Oddity thrives on.

It takes a long time to work up a new boat, particularly one that is to be raced offshore short handed. I am amazed at the amount of paperwork required to comply with the various races we want to enter.

With most of that done we are moving into the nitty gritty of how to short circuit the engine-starting procedure if the cockpit panel gives up the ghost. How do we isolate a rudder if the other one fails? Turns out it’s easy in the sense that each wheel is directly linked to its own rudder. All we have to do is remove the tiller bar that connects them.

Turns out that we need a very long socket to do this, not what you want to discover when at sea. This is something that I experienced and never forgot when competing in the OSTAR on Cornish Meadow, a 26ft Firebird. She was a trailer sailor and mid Atlantic the main beam started to come loose.

I opened the tool pack to find that the last person to use it hadn’t returned the dedicated spanner. This led to a frantic period of sawing and filing a one-off for the job as the boat slowly came apart. I managed it with bleeding hands just in time and have never taken anything for granted since. It’s all in the detail, so check, check, and double check.

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