legends · 3 min read ·
Starting Sheet
A yacht club's race sheets count boats on the water that are not in the fleet and are all pointing the same way.
**Skerrow Yacht Club — Autumn Series, Race 6 (Cruiser Class)**
**Race officer:** J. Pryor · **Course:** windward-leeward, 2 laps · **Wind:** SW 3–4 · **Start:** 14:00
**Entries (12 boats):** Whimbrel, Petrel, Kittiwake, Skua, Gannet, Fulmar, Tern, Shearwater, Curlew, Plover, Dunlin, Sandpiper.
· · ·
**Starting sheet — Race 6**
- **Sail · Boat · Start · Finish · Elapsed**
- 14 · Whimbrel · 14:00:00 · 15:48:20 · 1:48:20
- 22 · Petrel · 14:00:00 · 15:51:02 · 1:51:02
- 31 · Kittiwake · 14:00:00 · 15:53:40 · 1:53:40
- ... · ... · ... · ... · ...
- 77 · Sandpiper · 14:00:00 · 16:12:33 · 2:12:33
*Twelve boats started. Twelve boats finished. Results published 16:30.*
· · ·
**Race committee notes (Race 7, 11 October)**
Entries: 12. Boats at the start line: 12. Wind SW 4. Start 14:00.
Finish line: 13 boats crossed. The race officer's log lists the finishers in order. At the twelfth position there is a gap of three minutes, and then a thirteenth boat, sail number 00, no name, under full canvas, a gaff cutter, painted black, which crossed the line at 16:03:40. She was in the picture. Nobody remembers her.
*Race officer's remark: her sail number is not in the register. She was not on the starting sheet. She finished fifth.*
· · ·
**Race committee notes (Race 8, 18 October)**
Wind light. Start 14:00. Twelve boats at the line. Race abandoned at 15:30. No finishers within the time limit.
*Race officer's remark: at 15:00 the fleet was in a flat calm off the Skerrow light. From the committee boat, I counted fourteen sails on the water. Two more than the entries. They were of an old pattern. Lug rig, tan canvas. They did not seem to be moving. They lay with their sails limp, hulls low in the water, as boats do when they are very heavily laden.*
· · ·
**Race committee notes (Race 9, 25 October)**
Entries: 12. Boats on line: 12. Boats counted at the first mark: 16. At the leeward mark: 21. At the finish line: 29.
*The additional boats were all of the same kind. Open, clinker-built, fishing boats, tarred, with brown sails and no names. They sailed with the fleet. They followed the course. They kept the line, tack for tack, mark for mark, as though they had sailed this course many times, and had been sailing it for a very long time.*
*They crossed the finish in a single file. No-one on board them looked at the committee boat. The crews stood at their places, in oilskins, in silence, their faces turned seaward.*
· · ·
**Starting sheet — Race 10 (1 November)**
- **Sail · Boat · Start · Finish · Elapsed**
- 14 · Whimbrel · 14:00:00 · DNS · —
- 22 · Petrel · 14:00:00 · DNS · —
- ... · ... · ... · ... · ...
*All twelve entries: DNS (did not start). The owners declined to leave the harbour.*
**Race officer's remark:** At 14:00 I fired the gun. The sea off Skerrow was full of boats. I mean full. From the shore to the horizon, hulls, sails, masts, so close that the water between them was invisible. A fleet of a thousand. They were all pointed the same way: out. I watched them sail down the course, close-hauled, all together, a great grey cloud of canvas, towards a mark that is not on any chart.
· · ·
**Final committee note (Skerrow Yacht Club, 8 November)**
The Autumn Series is cancelled. The race officer has been replaced.
*Appended: the result sheet for Race 10 was found on the committee boat, blank, with a single entry written in the finishing time column, in pencil, in an old hand. 16:12:00. Beside it, in the boat name column, the name "Skerrow," and in the sail number column, a number: 14. It was the first boat in the fleet.*
*It was also, according to the club's records, the number of the boat that Mr. Pryor sailed in the first race he ever entered, in 1989, and lost.*