PRETTY TOUGH
“We were prepared for a very rough night but we didn’t have any inkling how rough it was going to be. As we passed the Scillies the wind was picking up from the west and as the front came through there was heavy rain. That cleared and it became bright moonlight over an extremely stormy sea. At that point we were starting to say: ‘Well, that looks like page 49 of Adlard Coles’s Heavy Weather Sailing’.”
It was August 1979 and Alan Ker was taking part in the Fastnet Race with a crew of friends. Aged 23, one of the youngest skippers, he was sailing his father’s Contessa 32, Assent. The Contessa was a small yacht even then, a nutshell by today’s standards, 32ft overall but only 24ft on the waterline, nipped in and narrow at the stern, slender amidships, with a long fin keel.
Yet the attributes of this pint-sized cruiser were what protected Ker and his crew. The Contessa was knocked down beyond horizontal, as many yachts were, but she righted herself after
