‘FIVE ON BOARD, ALL BRITISH CITIZENS'

Graham Sykes has an eventful training weekend with a last-minute vessel change, Border Force scrutiny and an overheating engine

- Graham Sykes

The Border Force vessels patrolling the Channel and the coastlines of the United Kingdom are part of every sailor’s reality in the post-Brexit environment with great emphasis on protecting our borders from illegal migrants and illegal imports from the EU. Our experience over one May weekend taught us a few lessons.

We had arranged a yacht for the weekend specifically to build miles in preparation for my Yachtmaster Offshore practical and for two friends preparing to take their RYA Day Skipper practical.

On the Thursday night we were informed the vessel was out of action. We had a late conference call and decided to charter a yacht: this pushed the price up and one of our crew dropped out, unable to justify several hundred pounds for a weekend’s sailing. The weather forecast was grim and we suspected we may be confined to the Solent, despite having made passage plans to Weymouth or Poole from Northney.

The next day, I negotiated the bareboat charter of Vantage of Lymington from Four Seasons Yacht Charter at a very reasonable price. Vantage is a Jeanneau 43 so our crew of five were rejoicing at the extra space – it would have been much cheaper if we had been able to recruit another five crew. We were effectively short-handed but there were no novices aboard so we went for it.

Vantage is based at Haslar Marina, which is known to me and two of the crew. Passage plans were revised giving us several options depending on how the weather panned out and how the crew felt beyond the Needles. On Friday night we did checks and a safety briefing on this unfamiliar vessel.