The Fastnet Race creates legends, and not just because of the tragically fatal 1979 edition. The first winner of the 600 nautical mile race from Cowes/Isle of Wight around the Fastnet Rock in the Celtic Sea and back to Plymouth was the pilot cutter "Jolie Brise" in 1925. Past winners include giants such as Olin and Roderick Stephens, John Illingworth, Éric Tabarly, Peter Blake, Ted Turner and Loïck Peyron. Last year, the two Ultime class trimarans "Gitana" and "Macif", skippered by French ocean giants Franck Cammas and François Gabart, fought a thrilling battle throughout the course.
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Much further back in the field, however, there was another boat that was being watched and cheered on by everyone. A completely inconspicuous Contessa 32 type vessel with the name "Assent" if you don't know its history. It was sailed by the descendants of her co-designer and shipyard owner Jeremy Rogers. As staid and outdated as the narrow ship with its long overhangs and small stern may appear from today's perspective, it has a great deal of significance, particularly in Anglo-Saxon sailing history.
The Contessa 32 named "Assent" is particularly seaworthy
We meet the "Assent" on a gloomy, grey afternoon on the Solent, the strait between the Isle of Wight and the southern English mainland, the birthplace of the America's Cup and decade-long venue of the now legendary Admiral's Cup. A light breeze is blowing and a late afternoon glow fills the sky, but "Assent" doesn't seem to be in her element yet. But when the crew sets the spinnaker and the wind picks up at the same time, the boat begins to rush across the jade-green sea as if there were no stopping it.
Suddenly, it looks as if the "most popular racer cruiser ever", as the shipyard is still uncharacteristically claiming for English behaviour, could actually win a big race. This is the GRP classic "Assent", the Contessa 32, which, built by Jeremy Rogers in 1972, was the only boat in its class to finish the hurricane- and disaster-ravaged Fastnet Race in 1979. She braved a storm of the century that struck down most of the boats in the fleet and claimed the lives of 15 competitors. No discussion of this tragedy is complete without mentioning the small but incredibly crucial role this particular boat played.
"Assent" is a special GRP classic, a special Contessa 32
"It's crazy," says Kit Rogers, son of designer Jeremy. "'Assent' is just one Contessa 32 - there are 650 of her kind out there, they're all pretty much identical. Nevertheless, this GRP classic is something special. Somehow sailing with her feels different because I have her history in front of my eyes. And because I know where she has been. You can feel that she can withstand rough conditions, which gives you that little bit more confidence."
Today's GRP classic "Assent" was launched in 1972 as hull number 25 and was originally called "Tessa of Worth". She was bought by Willy Ker in 1976, who gave her the new name, which means "consent". According to legend, this was because Ker had to get his wife's permission to buy the boat.
Willy Ker, who had a pronounced penchant for adventure, had actually only come to sailing by chance. As a military engineer, he had been stationed in Kiel after the Second World War and learnt the trade on a fleet of yachts that had been requisitioned by Great Britain as part of the reparations. As a soldier, he took a course in cartography at university and mapped the west coast of Canada on horseback together with a group of volunteers. He then organised an expedition to the Northwestern Territories with a team of dog teams and mapped Silver Lake on the edge of the Arctic Circle. These trips awakened his passion for exploring remote places, a passion that would stay with him for the rest of his life.
The "Assent" should start in the Fastnet Race
But Ker also had an ambitious side; the year after he bought the Assent, he entered her in the 1979 Fastnet Race, with his son Alan as crew. Two years later, the ship was back. This time Alan Skipper and some of his friends, all in their late twenties, were on board. "Assent" was entered in Division V, the smallest class, in which 14 other Contessa 32s competed alongside her.
However, the regatta got off to a very bad start. After a collision with the French half-tonner "Tikocco", the crew was forced to turn round and start again five minutes later. It took them another 36 hours to reach the Lizard, where they waited four hours at anchor in fog for the tide to turn.
It was not until the evening of the third day that the Shipping Forecast issued the first warning of a possible hurricane at 5.55 pm; at this point, the "Assent" was already far out in the Celtic Sea. By 11.30pm, the barometer had dropped sharply and the wind had reached force 9. Williams was still busy stitching a tear in the spinnaker when the 00.15 forecast issued a force 10 gale warning. Two hours later they had their first knockdown, but even that was dismissed with a joke.
Suddenly the boat gets into trouble
"It came so suddenly that we didn't have time to worry about the consequences," Williams wrote. "When the boat quickly righted itself, Fiona and I were still in our seats and only a small amount of water had washed into the cockpit, we shouted to Alan that everything seemed to be fine. And we also remarked that we could finally count a knockdown among our sailing experiences."
However, what followed was even more astonishing. After they had salvaged the damaged storm jib, the crew of the "Assent" simply carried on unperturbed. If the entries in the logbook and William's notes are to be believed, they not only coped with the conditions, but also revelled in their good fortune.
"The sailing that followed the knockdown for the rest of the night was as fantastic and exhilarating as many a man will ever experience in a lifetime," Williams wrote. "A crescent moon had appeared in the clearing sky, illuminating the wild seascape of foaming breakers. Phosphorescence in the spray streamed over sail and cabin deck, and the wind screamed through rigging and safety lines like a pack of coyotes, while all the time the little ship steadily followed her course, her movements now much lighter because we had taken in the jib. As the "Assent" climbed wave after wave (later there was talk of waves up to 40 feet), we couldn't help but cheer enthusiastically as she crested each peak and slid down into the next wave trough."
Incredible race on the high seas
The only indication that the crew of the "Assent" were sailing on the edge of their capabilities that night is provided by a significant gap in the log. Not a single entry was recorded between 2330 and 1020, apart from a short note about the knockdown, which looks as if it was added later. Without an anemometer, the crew didn't know how strong the wind really was; they were "probably better off with it", says Williams. As the Assent was not equipped with a VHF radio, the crew had no idea of the carnage going on around them. It wasn't until the next morning that they saw the rescue helicopters "practically besieging us" and passed the mastless yacht "Sandettie II". It became apparent that something was very wrong.
The next morning, the GRP classic rounded Fastnet Rock at 09:45, the crew "rested and in high spirits". As they sailed back towards Land's End that afternoon, they enjoyed a hearty curry and "thought we had done very well indeed". The next morning they had again reduced their sails to the main and later experienced another knockdown.
The "Assent" shot back across the channel to Plymouth under spinnaker at an average speed of eight knots, but six miles from the finish line it burst ("What a way to die!", according to the logbook entry). They crossed the finish line at 0142 and the crew were astonished to discover that not only had they finished first in their class, but that the Assent was the only boat in a group of 75 to finish the race.
The Contessa 32 "Assent" is the only ship to finish the race
The outstanding performance - along with the other Contessa 32s that gave up, but all escaped safely and without major damage - was one of the few positive stories to emerge from the 1979 Fastnet. In the investigations that were to shed light on the many damages and accidents, her seaworthy design was praised and judged to be more seaworthy than the radical excesses of the then common IOR formula. "Assent" soon achieved cult status, and almost no report on the race failed to mention this brave boat, which had achieved something that much larger designs had failed to do.
However, the 1979 Fastnet was only the beginning of the Contessa 32's legendary status. After the race, Ker continued to take part in regattas. He sailed in the double-handed class in the Round Britain Race (1978 and 1985), three times in the Scottish Three Peaks Race and once in the Transatlantic Race to Newport (1986).
The legend is born
It was during the 1978 Round Britain regatta that Willy Ker became interested in sailing in the northern latitudes. After an extensive refit in 1981, he returned to circumnavigate the Shetland Islands and then followed an arbitrary course that took him even further north. He finally circumnavigated Iceland in 1982.
Over the next 30 years, he logged 100,000 nautical miles. Ker sailed to Norway and Greenland (1986), then south to the Falklands and Antarctica (1992), back north across the Pacific, via the Easter Islands and Hawaii (1993) to Alaska, Siberia and back to Vancouver. He then had the "Assent" transported across Canada on a low-loader before sailing back out into the Atlantic through the Great Lakes and continuing his world tour to Greenland and Iceland. He undertook most of his voyages single-handed, occasionally accompanied by his wife Veronica or by sailors he had hired along the way.
Extreme tours - with a conventional boat. Surprisingly, today's GRP classic "Assent" had not been modified for sailing under such tough conditions, but was equipped with the standard equipment of a Contessa 32. Her layout was thoroughly functional and almost entirely devoid of creature comforts. Ker only installed a forward-facing sonar unit to detect icebergs and an SSB radio with a printer for weather forecasts. He installed a single-cylinder Bukh 10hp diesel engine, which was easy to repair and could be started by hand, and a paraffin/petroleum cooker and oven, with the idea that paraffin was readily available. He also carried three anchors and mounted an enormous winch with a long anchor chain on the foredeck, which enabled him to anchor in deeper waters.
The GRP classic was not actually made for such tours
Ker refused to take a life raft with him because he wanted to actively save himself if he was in danger, rather than passively drifting around waiting for help to arrive. Instead, he had an inflatable dinghy with a specially built rig. It was double-layered to protect him from possible attacks by leopard seals - the only thing he really seemed to be afraid of. He also refused to fill the boat's tank with tap water because he thought it tasted "absolutely disgusting". Instead, he preferred to fill the water tank directly from glacial streams.
His only concession to comfort was a small doghouse over the companionway - supposedly the canopy of an old fighter plane - under which he spent most of his time while at sea.
Ker's exploits did not go unnoticed: in 1983, he was invited to join the Royal Cruising Club, an illustrious organisation that included former sailing greats such as Bill Tilman, Miles and Beryl Smeeton and Francis Chichester. In 2011, Ker made his last voyage on the "Assent" and sailed to Greenland - still single-handed despite his advanced age of 85. However, after suffering a heart attack during the trip, he was persuaded to return to the UK by plane. His son Alan sailed the boat home and put it up for sale. For his father Willy, it must have felt like losing a part of his body. When Ker died on 13 July 2019 at the age of 94, the Rogers sailed the "Assent" to Plymouth to scatter his ashes across the English Channel.
New parts for the "Assent"
Since Kit and Jessie Rogers acquired the GRP classic "Assent", only a few parts have been renewed, little has been changed. She now has new sails, a new boom, self-tailing winches, and the running rigging now leads back to the cockpit. The hull has been repainted. Instead of SSB and radar, she is now also equipped with a VHF radio and a chart plotter.
On board the GRP classic "Assent", everything feels primarily functional and unfussy, with her scraped paint surface and her original mast with the robust mast steps, which you can see the nautical miles on. The untreated deck also still shows traces of its many voyages. The ship has not been modernised or significantly restored, it feels more like the spirit of its sailing history has been respected. Ker had always avoided visiting it after the sale, but he would certainly have approved of everything the Rogers have done and left with it. And that is important to them.
"Assent": A CSF classic with an impressive history
"I still feel like it's not really our boat," says Kit Rogers. "It's still Willy's yacht, and we're just interlopers. There was without question a relationship between Willy and 'Assent' that can never be repeated. But we're slowly starting to have our own adventures with her - not at the same high level as Willy, but exciting enough for us.
It's always tricky to take over a boat with such an impressive history. But if there is anyone who can give the "Assent" a new future that respects its past without repeating or copying it, it is the Rogers. With the "Assent", they finished the Fastnet Race in the IRC 4 class once again - in a time of five days and 51 minutes. Along the way, they have gained a huge number of new fans.
With the sentence "People like you are the superstars of offshore racing", an over-euphoric user commented on the family's finish photo on the Royal Ocean Racing Club's Facebook page. But the real superstar is of course the GRP classic "Assent", which has experienced it all before - and much more besides.
This article first appeared in YACHT 14/2020 and has been revised for this online version.
Technical data Contessa 32 "Assent"
- Designer: D. Sadler/ J. Rogers
- Hull length: 9.75 m
- Waterline length: 7.32 m
- Width: 2.90 m
- Draught: 1.68 m
- Weight: 4.3 tonnes
- Ballast/proportion: 2.0 t/ 47 %
- Sail area downwind: 52.2 m²
- Engine: (Beta) 20.0 hp
- Berths: 5
With its long keel, skeg, pronounced overhangs, spoon bow and top rig, the Contessa 32 cannot hide its age. The high ballast ratio of almost 50 per cent, which only regatta boats have today, is also remarkable. There is no aft cabin.
