In less than 16 hours I will be on my flight home to San Francisco for the first time in over a year and half. Very much looking forward to it. I will have to re learn how to drive my truck and get myself set up in my new place in Mill Valley looking over the square. Looking forward to my first bay area race on the 14th April on Rhum Boogie to the Farlonnes. Today for the first time I finished a regatta and someone else took care of the boat. Hannah and Sean left the dock for Antigua a few hours ago and I get to fly directly home. The repair to the boat was complete but it will need to be finished off in Charleston – respray of awlgrip.

Today 40 Degrees didn’t go out racing as the crew wanted a day by the pool so Hannah and I went sailing on a 63 foot racing/cruising trimeran called Paradox.

Both of us got to helm and it was a great trip around the islands effortlessly moving at 12 knots upwind. Cam Lewis the famous trimeran sailor was the navigator, there were 4 french sailors, a british guy called Sam and the owner who is from the Bay Area.

Today we blasted downwind with the A3 back to Nanny Cay from Virgin Gorda. We unfortunately had an incident on the start and by the time we were back racing we were a ways behind so decided to go conservative with the A3 instead of flying the A3 in 20 knots gusting higher. A beautiful day on the water followed by some boat work so we can be on the water racing tomorrow for the start of the BVI regattta proper. Only 3 days left then I am headed home to California finally after so long away – looking forward to it.

We moved to BVI and within 5 minutes of getting to the house it was full of 16 crew while Hannah and I made salmon, couscous and grilled veg for dinner. The forecast for the race up to virgin GordaWe was for under 5 knots of wind so I took the boat with 7 others while everyone else went by ferry. The race committee boat postponed the race as there was no wind and put up the follow me signal. At this point Neil from Acadia a friend of mine motored up and started towing us at 8 knots – much better than 4 knots under our own steam:-). We never did reach that wind so unfortunately they are having a race tomorrow to make up for it so there goes my lay day of diving. Things could be worse in paradise. Tonight and tomorrow I am off dinner duties as we are going out at Bitter ENd YC and Leverick. Yippee.

For this regatta we are racing under a different rating so we can’t use our code 0 which means of course that we will wAnt it!

Finished racing at St Thomas and now we are moving to the British Virgin Islands tomorrow. We will load 10 onto the boat and 7 will take the ferry over to Tortola. We will move into our houses over there and then on tuesday there is a passage race up to Virgin Gorda. We spend a day in Virgin Gorda where I hope to go diving with some of the guys before a race back. The regatta website is http://www.bvispringregatta.org/bvi/.

David who I raced with to Hawaii came in to day so I am looking forward to him coming aboard. Hannah (40 degrees boat captain) and myself are exhausted and the crew is out partying so we are attempting to sleep with the music blasting out from the yacht club. It has been a hard few days racing the boat around short courses and my tan lines are interesting to behold! I believe I might get the rudolph award with my bright red nose

My friend from the bay area Michelle will be at BVI so it will be great fun to catch up with her after such a long time away.

Have a great week

We left Antigua (Sean, Hannah and myself) on monday afternoon on the Class 40 called 40 degrees and delivered it to St Thomas for the Rolex Regatta. We got in at 1:30am on wendesay morning and after clearing customs and immigration headed to the regatta site at St Thomas YC. Today thursday we practiced for quite a long time getting all the manouvers down with 10 people aboard which is quite a few for this design of boat. We will be here racing till monday morning then head to the BVI. Check out the action at www.rolexcupregatta.com

Congratulations to RYM customer Bruce Stone on Arbitrage J105 for winning his class in Rolex BBS in SF. Also to the other customers who finished in the top ten – Donkey Jack and Jam Session also in the J105 fleet.

Lectronic Latitude about RBI with Myles on Santana

Olivier and David singing Sinartra’s ‘My Way’ on the stage at Kanehoe YC

The lais have been put around our necks and the guys are drinking mai tais.

We got in a few hours ago and Wayne was met by 14 of his family who are all here on holiday to meet him. Time to get off the boat have some food and get a good nights sleep before starting work on the boat in the morning.

Thanks for following!

A cool story just in – my friend JP doublehanded with his girlfriend on Express 27 Great White coming 2nd and at the half way he asked her to marry him so they are now engaged! Way to go.

On Saturday night after a particularly bad set of broaches on the ‘French’ watch there was a large bang followed by us all jumping out of our bunks like fireman to douse the spinnaker. We are getting pretty practiced at the douses and resets at this point! Anyways high powered flashlight in hand we scoured the boat for the offending noise to find that it was the preventer that had released when the boom had been dragging in the water.

We have now got into the habit of having time outs around 2am for a few hours after pushing the limits through a squall and the rigging/sail repair shop has to go into business. Last night was no exception with a repair to frankinkites tack and we had to build some spinnaker sheets from a spare halyard and a change sheet. Also we changed out the spinnaker halyard with the one I had rebuilt the day before. At first light this morning we were off again with the kite up.

The first 5 boats in our fleet have finished and there are two behind us. We are around 200 miles to go and heading pretty much at the mark.

Todays sunrise was the most beautiful of the trip so far with the clouds tinged with pink and purple followed by a double rainbow. The guys have gotten really good at helming and are building confidence each day they have also taken up fishing.

The Dove saying of the day is ‘take every change to give’….

The flying fish are even more proliferate and they can fly a surprising distance looking as Wayne said like sparrows swooping around the waves. A gannet also joined us gracefully gliding around the boat and a squid met it’s end on the deck along with numerous flying fish.

While doing some training on night driving last night I was asked what I use to helm at night and after quite a lot of thought we figured out it is actually 13 different inputs to use to sail as low and fast as possible. David says his CPU unit needs upgrading as he just can’t handle that many different inputs! So we have wind on the face, wave pattern, heel of the boat, feel of the helm, windex light, binnacle compass (for rate of turn), electronic compass, TWA, TWS, boat speed, TWD, curl of the spinnaker and sound of the  boat.

This English skin can’t deal with the heat of the sun despite factor 70 and I have put David on task of forcing me to drink more water so time for me to hide away for a few hours until the cool of the evening is upon us.

Next blog entry I will probably be on land getting ready for delivering the boat back to SF leaving around the 25th.