Corinthians make ‘NOSTAR’ transat
Following the postponement of this year’s OSTAR and TWOSTAR transatlantic races to 2022, a small group of determined solo and doublehanded skippers set off on their own transatlantic challenge in May.
The transat was initiated by Charlene Howard, who had entered the 2021 TWOSTAR race on her Sun Odyssey 45.2 AJ Wanderlust with co-skipper Bobby Drummond. When it became evident the official races organised by the Royal Western YC were likely to be postponed for another year, Howard and a small group of other entries decided to cross together: Scottish single-hander Jock Hamilton on his 32-footer Freya, Ertan Beskardes on his Rustler 36 Lazy Otter, and Guido Cantini on his Vancouver 34 Hannah of Cowes.
“We all left together, on the exact day and time that OSTAR/TWOSTAR was supposed to leave. We were able to get the sailing instructions from the 2017 race just to confirm the course, which is very simple: you leave Plymouth breakwater, leave Eddystone light to starboard and then finish at Castle Hill, Newport 3,000 miles later.”
As is frequently the case for the official OSTAR, the NOSTAR fleet faced a tough Atlantic crossing. “When we left it was blowing quite hard. The decision I made off the south-west coast of Ireland was I didn’t want to go straight into big seas. The unintended impact of that was we got caught in the middle of a secondary low that was not showing on any of the charts, which forced us to go north because it was where we could make the best headway,” explains Howard.
“That helped our race a lot because we ended up skirting above the low pressure systems and getting some tailwinds, whereas the other guys decided to go a more rhumbline route and I think they encountered worse sea state because of that. We actually had quite a nice crossing for the first 10 days or so because we were above the low pressure systems. We went as high as 56°N, so then we had to climb back down and went through five days of near-gales and quite heavy seas.”
On board AJ Wanderlust they suffered a broken inner forestay, ripped mainsail and a destroyed wind generator, but were able to continue into Newport, arriving after 31 days.
Meanwhile, Jock Hamilton was dismasted. “Jock got about halfway across the track when he dismasted, and then showed very good seamanship and jury rigging [to sail back to] Scotland,” explains Howard. “Ertan on Lazy Otter had three knockdowns in one night and lost their
‘I love racing because, no matter how slow you’re going, you can’t turn on the engine’
self steering gear, so they went to the Azores to get sorted out.
“And Guido started with us but was immediately having issues with both his hydrovane as well as his electric pilot. So he returned to Plymouth and then started again.” Cantini later retired to the Azores, leaving Howard and Drummond the default winners of the inaugural NOSTAR Race.
Howard, who is American but lives on the Isle of Man, is an archetypal Corinthian ocean racing sailor. She has raced some 100,000 miles on her production yacht, which she describes as ‘fairly standard but significantly beefed up’.
“I love racing because, no matter how slow you’re going, you can’t turn on the engine. So you just have to challenge yourself to make 11 tons of boat move in 3 knots of wind. And I love the selfsufficiency of leaving and knowing that it is simply yourself and your sailing partner and your skills that have to get you to the other side.”