Southport 24 Hour Race

I remember going as part of our club team in the late 70s. I had to have a note to get permission from my school to miss Friday so we could get up to Southport. I went up with the boat owner, towing his GP14 behind his 850cc Mini - it's a long haul from Essex. By the time we'd stopped at a pub for lunch on the way and had something to eat when we got there I was completely out of money until I got home tired, hungry and thirsty on Sunday night. It was windy. Very windy. We ran out of spare parts for the boat before midnight on Saturday. Bob Fisher was well-oiled and by today's standards unacceptably, er, frank on the commentary. Happy days!
 
MikeBz said:
I remember going as part of our club team in the late 70s. I had to have a note to get permission from my school to miss Friday so we could get up to Southport. I went up with the boat owner, towing his GP14 behind his 850cc Mini - it's a long haul from Essex. By the time we'd stopped at a pub for lunch on the way and had something to eat when we got there I was completely out of money until I got home tired, hungry and thirsty on Sunday night. It was windy. Very windy. We ran out of spare parts for the boat before midnight on Saturday. Bob Fisher was well-oiled and by today's standards unacceptably, er, frank on the commentary. Happy days!
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Which year was that? I remember a couple of Races that were very windy. The gossip was it was too expensive for organisers to cancel. After the carnage of the first few hours, most boats sailed the rest of the night under jib only.
I got up for my shift in the dark and F7 and all could obtain as food and drink was a pint of beer and a Mars bar - then jump into a semi flooded Enterprise and out into the darkness.
Memorable. Great unless you were the poor boat owner as wrecked at the end.
 
I did it 2-3 times at university and it was great fun. When did it stop?
1979 I think was windy - very windy. We sailed our GP14 part of the night on jib alone, overtaking a few teams who gave it a rest overnight.
 
I can’t remember exactly which year, probably ‘77 or ‘78. I do remember many teams running out of spare parts, and spare boats (some teams took a spare boat!) being robbed of parts. At some point in the night Bob Fisher announced over the PA “Will Frensham Pond Sailing Club kindly pi** off!” - I don’t remember why but I guess they kept wanting him to put out appeals for parts. When our ship finally stopped with what turned out to be a terminal failure one of our more lubricated crews (now sadly RIP) jumped into the water and waded to the back of the boat to assess the problem - “What do you need Jamie?” shouted the shore crew, “Do you need any tools? Screws? Screwdriver?”. “Never mind that”, he replied, “just give me some string and some nails!”. What had actually happened was the cast aluminium rudder stock had sheared in two, so we were all done before midnight. Being a lightweight teenager I never even got to sail. Some boats just stopped racing for several hours and some continued under jib only.
 
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