1811 Topsham Toe in the Water has finished, finished well and finished 10th !!

What a finish it was too! First it was the sailors who fought back through the night with Pete and Mike rowing past 5 boats and the first half of Lismore Island when the wind died. Then Mike slept while Kate took up an oar for the next half of Lismore Island. So Pete rowed a 40’ boat 18 miles in a night. These Marines are made of something special! They reached the Corran narrows and found 5 knots of tide against them. They had three attempts to shoot the narrows and could not get through and thought they would have to wait for the tide to turn. Then they saw the other Topsham boat Kithros II steaming up towards them. They watched in awe as they gave a master class in how to get through! Our team are fast learners and Mike immediately copied the technique of the masters and got through straight away. They were also followed through by the all girl team of Helly Hansen UK who they have been with all the way round despite the girls having a faster boat. All was going to plan as they steamed up towards the finish when suddenly the wind died again! A desperate bit of final rowing saw them get in ias 12th boat just ahead of 3 others who finished in the next 12 minutes and within 41 minutes of the two boats immediately ahead of them. They beat Helly Hansen UK by only 4 minutes after nearly 5 days of racing giving Kate the title of first lady skipper although she would be the first to say she would never have been there had it not been for some very, very special men.
Two of those special men were the runners, Paul and Patrick. They had helped greatly by rowing and sailing on the last leg but still were raring to go. They did a quick transfer and set off at great pace. Despite the hot sun they did a remarkable time of 3 hour 6 minutes which would have been easily been the fastest time for the run last year but they were just piped this year by GFT Adventure who beat them by just 3 minutes. They also rapidly overtook both the pairs of runners who were started off 43 minutes ahead of them. The runners 3 places ahead of this had already finished before they set off and to beat these would have been tough call even for our super heroes!. How do they mange to look so fresh and smilely at the finnish of such a tough run?

This final series of star turns meant a top ten finish – a remarkable result out of 32 starters in a very tough race in testing condiitond which 8 boats failed to finish 5 ofthem because the only way they could escape from being dashed against the rocks was by using their motor.