4.30am rather an early start for the good ship Freedom and her crew, most of whom were ex Cape Towners, Mel, Butch, then Pete, Andy and Mat. We joined hundreds of yachts in the Solent to await our start for the Round the Island Race. Beautiful morning with good breezes but cold. Lovely run down to the Needles then hardening up to go around, past St Catherines and on around where it got quite challenging with strong winds coming down off the cliffs. Racing got very close coming up the Solent from Bembridge, and in the end, Freedom got 7th in Class out of 49 and 102nd overall out of 1600 odd yachts. Not bad for a floating home!!! we had a great day, all exhausted by the end of it, so rocked into The Jolly Sailor for a good meal and lots of Badgers!!!