Crew Blog

Farewell New York

04 June 2008

Ok so that was New York, in and out in two days. We managed a night and a half day looking around downtown Manhattan, taking in the night time view from the Empire State building, very impressive it was too!

After an early breakfast we slipped lines around 08:15 and motored into the river. The morning was damp and foggy, and the usual skyline looked very different. After a 4 or 5 hour motor out of the Hudson River in quite heavy fog at times, we arrived at the rendezvous point for the race start. With very little wind the decision was taken to motor a little further to avoid a shipping separation lane.

Race start was to be the more familiar Le Mans style, where we all line up and then hoist the head sails after a countdown. We started well and as per race rules we had to wait 10 minuets before making any changes to the sail plan. As soon as we could we hoisted the lightweight spinnaker but unfortunately the wind was so light at this point we could not get the spinnaker to fill. For around 15 minutes we were floundering with the rest of the fleet and we actually ended up pointing back towards New York! We quickly dropped the lightweight spinney and re hoisted the wind seeker and soon we were moving again in the right direction. It wasn’t too long before the speed increased and we dropped the wind seeker & hoisted the bigger, more efficient Yankee 1.

It looks like we are in for a busy time over the next few days changing sails to make the most of the variable wind conditions. Everyone is now looking forward to a good race and a four if not a five day stopover in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Quent Thompson