The RORC Cervantes Rudderless

Silver Shamrock — Ron Holland half-tonner, GBR 5253

I have raced the Cervantes Trophy Race quite a few times since 1969 when I first started racing offshore with my father, and I still think of it as generally one of the coldest and unpredictable short domestic RORC races of the season!

It’s not the longest. Not the hardest on paper. Not the one people fear in the way they fear the Fastnet, the Myth of Malham, or a proper Channel hammering in bad weather, but its the first of the season and you always feel a little aprehensive, or at least I do.

The crew are rusty. The kit has been serviced, modified, improved, replaced, but not yet truly tested. The sails may look good. The safety gear may be ticked off. The instruments may be talking to each other. But nothing has yet been under continuous offshore load.

A little history

The Cervantes trophy was donated to RORC in 1972 by Bob Watson and named after his series of Cervantes yachts. The most famous, Cervantes IV, was part of Britain’s victorious 1971 Admiral’s Cup team alongside Ted Heath’s Morning Cloud II and Arthur Slater’s Prospect of Whitby.

So the name matters. It comes from proper offshore racing pedigree. Not folklore. Not romance. Campaign racing. Hard boats. Good crews. Measured performance.

The modern race normally starts from the Royal Yacht Squadron line in Cowes and finishes in Le Havre, with RORC describing the course as Cowes to Le Havre via marks, approximately 110–160 nautical miles. It is organised by RORC in association with the Royal Yacht Squadron and the Société des Régates du Havre.

In practical terms, you leave Cowes, work out through the Solent, head south across the Channel towards the Seine Bay, round the relevant mark or marks, and then shape north-east towards Le Havre. The final approach is not simply “point at France and finish”. You are dealing with tidal timing especially in spring tides, commercial traffic, and the shipping channel out of Le Havre. You have to stay disciplined when the crew are tired and the boat has already shown you what sort of day you are having.

RORC’s own reports capture the character of the race well. In 2024, the race was described as a 110-mile race to Le Havre, with a fast downwind start, light patches south of the Isle of Wight, compression in the fleet, and late gains near the finish. Black Sheep’s skipper Jake Carter said they “made a late gain” by getting further east and not fighting the tide as much.

That is the Cervantes in one sentence: a race that looks simple until the final third.

This is my story of a recent Cervantes Trophy race in 2019

She was lying in Falmouth, tired but still obviously a serious boat. A Ron Holland half-tonner. Built in Ireland. Originally owned and campaigned by Harold Cudmore, one of Ireland’s great racing sailors, with America’s Cup, Admiral’s Cup and major offshore history around him. She has won the Half ton Cup with Harold as skippe in 1976.

She was not pristine when I saw her. The interior was tired. The deck gear had seen better days. She had been sailed locally, but not really campaigned in the way a boat like that should be campaigned.

But the important things were still there.

The hull was right. The rig was right. The shape was right.

And some boats, even when they are neglected, still tell you what they are.

I bought her and sailed her back single-handed from Falmouth to the Solent. That trip was enough to confirm what I already thought. She needed work, but she was fundamentally a very good boat.

So I took her out of the water and rebuilt her properly. Not as a museum piece. Not as a nostalgic half-tonner. As a boat I could race hard, including short-handed.

We replaced deck gear. Sorted the engine. Made the interior usable and safe. I moved her away from being a fully overlapping genoa boat and converted her into a non-overlapping setup that could be sailed double-handed and single-handed. OneSails in Hamble built new jibs, mainsails, spinnakers, a Code Zero, and asymmetric options. She was re-rated and put back into proper racing shape.

Nathan, who now runs One Sails Hamble, became a very good co-skipper. We raced her fully crewed in the Hamble and Warsash series. She was quick. We won races. The boat had come alive again, and then we prepared her for offshore racing double handed.

The first rudder that failed in the Cervantes Trophy race

One of the jobs that winter was the rudder.

The original rudder was an old spade blade, quite square in section. It was improved into a smoother, more modern foil, built around the existing stock. Later on I had a completely new rudder made by John Corby in Cowes, but at this stage this was an upgraded blade on the old stock.

It looked right. It looked efficient. It looked like the sort of sensible improvement you make when you are trying to bring an older race boat up to date.

We put it back in the boat.

Then we did the Nab Tower Race.

The helm felt slightly heavy.

Not alarming. Not dramatic. Just slightly wrong.

And this is where offshore sailing teaches you its first serious lesson: problems rarely introduce themselves as problems. They introduce themselves as feel. As load. As a sound. As a small change you can explain away.

I noticed it.

Then I moved on.

That was the mistake.

The next race Nathan and I chose was the Cervantes Trophy, racing double-handed.

Double-handed offshore racing was growing quickly at that time, and Silver Shamrock suited it. She was light, responsive, manageable, and properly quick. We started the race, settled in, and got ourselves offshore.

Somewhere around mid-Channel, in a south-westerly building into the low twenties, everything changed in a fraction of a second.

One moment I was steering.

The next, the load disappeared.

I looked behind me and saw the rudder blade floating away.

A white piece of foam and glass, just there in the wake, leaving us.

It is a strange thing to see part of your own boat floating away behind you. Your mind takes a second to accept what your eyes have already understood.

We had no rudder.

The immediate concern was whether we were also taking water. If the failure had happened in the wrong way, around the stock or the hull exit, we could have had a very different problem. Fortunately, the stock arrangement ran up through a sleeve inside the hull and the boat was not heeled enough for water to come flooding out of the top of the tube.

So we were floating.

But we were not steering.

And those are two very different states of being.

We tried to rig a jury steering system. Spinnaker poles. Floorboards. Rope. Anything that might give us leverage over the stern. These ideas sound more convincing on land than they feel in twenty-plus knots, mid-Channel, with the boat rolling and the sea state building.

We were drifting towards the traffic separation zone. The sails were down. The boat was uncomfortable. The situation was no longer about racing. It was about risk.

So I called Solent Coastguard.

The Selsey lifeboat launched and came to us. That was not a five-minute job. They had to come a long way. By the time they reached us, it was dark, cold, and the conditions were getting worse.

They got a line aboard. I led it through the pulpit and secured it properly around the mast. Then they began towing us back towards the Solent.

That created the next problem.

A 32-foot racing yacht with no rudder does not tow like a normal yacht. At anything much above five or six knots, she began to sheer about, loading the tow, heeling over, and becoming frankly dangerous. I called them on the VHF and asked them to slow down.

They did, but that created a problem for them. The Selsey lifeboat is a powerful offshore lifeboat. Running slowly in that sea state was deeply uncomfortable, and they told us they had crew onboard who were becoming seriously seasick. Eventually they had to let us go and return.

So there we were again.

Rudderless. In the dark. About twenty miles off the Nab. Waiting.

The Bembridge lifeboat was then tasked to come out and take over. They arrived later, got a line aboard in the dark, and began the long tow home. At one point the line got caught around the keel and caused some damage, but by then the priority was simple: get the boat and crew safely back.

The RNLI are extraordinary in those moments. Not in a sentimental way. In a practical, professional, disciplined way. They come out when things are already difficult, and they do the job.

The nearest safe haven would normally have been Portsmouth. But after some discussion — and probably more negotiation than I deserved — they brought us back to Cowes.

Safe.

Cold. Tired. Embarrassed. And very much educated.

There was nothing extreme about that Cervantes.

No storm. No survival conditions. No heroic narrative of battling through impossible weather.

Just a small warning sign ignored.

That is what makes the story useful.

The Cervantes did not create the problem. It revealed it.

That is what early-season offshore racing does. It takes every assumption made in the yard, every “probably fine”, every “we’ll keep an eye on it”, every “it felt a bit odd but not too bad”, and tests it under load.

The result is either confidence or consequence.

RORC’s recent Cervantes reports show the race’s modern character clearly. In 2023, 88 boats started and 86 finished in Le Havre, with Gilles Fournier and Corinne Migraine’s J/133 Pintia winning overall for the fourth time. Fournier described their “special relationship” with the race and noted that winter improvements to weight and sail area had paid off.

In 2024, Trevor Middleton’s Sun Fast 3600 Black Sheep won overall after IRC correction. In 2025, Dan and Zeb Fellows won overall in the Sun Fast 3300 Orbit, a father-and-son double-handed team, underlining how competitive the short-handed fleet has become.

That is important. The Cervantes is not just a nostalgic RORC opener. It is now a very sharp test of modern IRC offshore sailing: good double-handed boats, JPKs, Sun Fasts, well-sailed French teams, experienced Solent crews, youth teams, and serious campaign boats all in the same early-season examination.

And the exam is simple.

Do you know your boat?

Not in theory. Not from the rating certificate. Not from last season. Not from what the yard said.

Do you know it today, under load, offshore, in the dark, when something goes wrong?

For me, the lesson of that race was not “rudders break”.

That is too simple.

The lesson was that offshore racing punishes uncertainty. The heavy helm in the Nab Tower Race was information. I failed to treat it as information. I treated it as a minor oddity.

That is the difference between experience and wisdom.

Experience notices. Wisdom stops and investigates.

The Cervantes gave me that lesson in the most direct way possible.

And that is why I still respect the race.

Not because it is especially long. Not because it is always brutal. But because it comes early, and early-season offshore racing is where truth and optimism first collide.

The Pre-Cervantes Checklist

This is not a box-ticking exercise. It is a way of removing uncertainty before the race removes it for you.

Steering (no kidding!)

The steering must be perfect. No unusual load. No stiffness. No play. No noise. No “probably fine”.

If the helm felt different last time, find out why.

Check the rudder, stock, bearings, quadrant, cables, tiller head, emergency steering and access. Do not assume that because it worked last year it works this year.

Rig and deck gear

Every pin, split ring, terminal, block, clutch, traveller car and loaded fitting needs looking at as though it is about to be used for twelve hours continuously.

Because it is.

Sail plan

Know the sail plan before the start.

Not just “kite if it is windy” or “Code Zero if it frees off”. Know the crossovers. Know the change points. Know who does what when it changes.

Hesitation offshore is expensive.

First three hours

Have the first three hours mapped.

The exit from Cowes, the Solent phase, the transition offshore, the likely first sail change, the watch pattern and the navigator’s first real decision all need to be clear before the gun.

Watch system

Start the watch system before anyone is tired.

Waiting until people are cold, hungry and slow is not a watch system. It is damage limitation.

Instruments

Calibrate what matters.

Boat speed. True wind. Apparent wind. Heading. Pilot response if you use one. If the numbers are wrong, the crew will either chase lies or stop trusting the boat.

Both are bad.

Safety

Lifejackets checked. AIS beacons checked. Harnesses, tethers, jackstays, grab bags, flares, torches, VHF, handheld VHF, MOB kit, bilge pumps, engine, fuel, charging, nav lights.

Not because the rules say so.

Because if you need it, you need it immediately.

Le Havre approach

Do not leave the Le Havre approach until you see the lights.

Know the shipping channel. Know the tide. Know the likely final layline or approach angle. Know what you will not do, as well as what you hope to do.

A tired crew makes poor late decisions.

Mindset

This is not a warm-up.

It is the first proper offshore test of the season.

Treat it like that and the Cervantes becomes useful. Treat it casually and it will teach you something anyway.

I have done the Cervantes many times since 1977.

The race has changed. The boats have changed. The rating systems, sails, electronics, autopilots and crew structures have changed.

But the central truth has not.

Offshore racing does not reward what you meant to check.

It rewards what you actually checked.

The Cervantes just tells you earlier than most.