In any sailor's book, the Fastnet is a classic race. This may be because of the 1979 storm and associated loss of life, or the absurdity of sailing all along the south English coast, across the Celtic Sea, round the Fastnet rock so close to Ireland that you can see the fields and smell the Guinness, but then heading straight back without stopping. No matter - it's a great race to do.

Qualifying for the Fastnet is the first hurdle - half the crew have to sail 300 or more miles in offshore races in the boat to be used in order to qualify. So we spent a good number of weekends on mad dashes across the Channel to St Vaast (cold, time for a coffee before we left), to St. Malo (light winds, quick look round town, dash back under engine) and around the English coast (foggy, mixed winds, very boring at times drifting with the tide off sewer outfalls off Brighton).

But qualify we did. Tina was working so couldn't join us, and then disaster as Elaine, our other genoa trimmer, hurt her back (an injury that was to put her out of sailing all season). I always said swimming was dangerous.

The race left Cowes with a gentle beat, in company with a lot of other craft. Tactically we wanted to keep in the tide, and worked our way through the Solent and then off past Anvil Point and away. The race is governed by tidal gates - get them right and you are swept past the headlands, get them wrong and you park up and have all sorts of hassles getting back in touch. Heading offshore or inshore, choosing the right sails, ensuring you're awake enough to make the critical decisions at the right times, eating properly, motivating your crewmates, and always always always driving the boat, adjusting sails, steering in sympathy with the waves - for over 600 miles, non-stop, for 5 days - it's a tough call to do it right.

The wind dropped right off, and we anchored for about 5 hours off the headland, in 40m of water. Every rope on board was used, and some boats had so much weight down and so far to pull it up that when they came to leave it took them another 6 hours to get it all back on board. We ghosted and trimmed and worked hard, making the most of the bits of wind that came through, and passed Land's End in a good position. Force 6, a large swell and a few breakers made for an interesting sail change in the dark, and then we pointed towards the Fastnet and were off across that sometimes wild stretch of water. Constantly monitoring the weather forecasts, deciding on when fronts may form, where the highs would be, and how to work the wind angles so that we eventually ended up at the rock having taken the fastest route kept me occupied for most of the time - I hardly sailed the boat on deck, but sat tuned in to my computer, weather faxes and radio reports, constantly analysing the best routes, whilst the rest of the crew got on with sailing and living. We ran a 2 watch system, 4 on each watch, slightly modified to allow me to navigate at critical times when I was off watch and to pull in the experienced sailors from the other watch to cover me. It worked fine - 4 hours on and 4 hours off during the day, 3 on, 3 off at night, with an overlapping hour in the evening for crew gathering and dinner.

Tina and Elaine contributed the menu and organisation - we took frozen dinners (one portion vegetarian, the rest proper food) that were designed to be one pot meals, where possible. Mediterranean lamb was great, as was the curry, and the stew, and pasta; in fact, food was one of the things that we all looked forwards to every day. This contrasted with some of the boats, less organised than ourselves: one of them had Pot Noodles every day for each meal - another had nothing but cheese sandwiches.

We rounded the rock in a light breeze around lunchtime, chatted to the race officials on the VHF and told them about our apple crumble, drank champagne to celebrate, then set off on the return leg for the Scillies. Most of the fleet went to the west, but we headed eastwards towards hopefully better winds and the predicted shift. Whilst the shift didn't come (the high stayed resolutely put, giving us sunshine for much of the week, actually), the breeze did, and we powered off changing sails hourly. The asymmetric went up and pulled us along fantastically, but we delayed taking it down for too long and sailed a little below our ideal course. Back to the genoas, bouncing around the Scilly Isles, and we sloshed through the rocky maze cutting it as close as we dared before heading towards Plymouth and the finish. Lizard Point passed in the dark, with us luffing to keep a boat from rolling us to windward. After over 100 hours of racing and we were within touching distance of another boat! Using GPS and some very careful navigation, we passed a group of rocks less than a stone's throw away, and shook off our pursuer in the process, then settled down to make our way across the bay and into harbour.

This was one of the hardest parts - a beat into strong counter-tides, a slow headsail change in the pitch black on a heaving deck, and some difficult decisions about whether to head inshore or offshore. But we stuck to it, and passed the Plymouth breakwater to finish.

Tied up, dumped damp clothing everywhere, then to the yacht club for an all day breakfast and lots and lots of beer. Party, reception, party, and then the delivery home for those who'd not escaped - a mindless but pleasant enough beat back up the south coast, the only really notable experience being standing by a yacht caught in fishing nets and so anchored to the seafloor, swung this way and that by the tide; we waited for a couple of hours until the lifeboat arrived, then took our leave and returned to Hamble.

A major triumph for the crew: 8^th in class (out of 76), in 4 days 23 hours 12 minutes and 53 seconds - the first British X332 home. And what a great trip: eating pasta as the red sun sinks below the horizon, anchored 2 miles offshore; dolphins surfing a gentle bow wave; close tacks to the Fastnet lighthouse so we could wave to those watching over us from up there; powering through white water overfalls off Bishops Rock lighthouse; eating sausage and egg and drinking beer at 11 in the morning once we'd finished. Yes, it was fun. There's never another first Fastnet - but it's not the last.