Yesterday morning we pulled back into Antigua YC Marina and I was hardly able to talk or get across the boat on the last tacks into the finish I was that battered and bruised. The 600 mile race was technically exciting and the only thing that would have made it more of a suicide mission would have been cold English weather. As the only bowman on the boat I was up for every sail change and basically stayed zipped up in my Kokotat drysuit the whole way round. The first night I went against my cardinal rule and just stayed in it sleeping in the back pipe cot next to the steering cables.
The high of the event was on the leg on the last night from Barbuda to Redonda with the A2 (really we needed the A3). Mike and I swapped helm every 45 minutes as it was all you could do to keep the kite full and not wipeout. With gusts up to 26 knots (the A2 top end is 20knots) and a wind direction that was swinging through 30 degrees (we were carrying at 135 TWA should have been at 145TWA). We were both on the helm not able to fully enjoy the experience as this was the leg that most likely would determine our position. The 55 mile leg went by in 3.5 hours and I got the top speed of the race at 21.6knots. Water was just fire hosing across the deck – the trimmers and grinder doing an excellent job to keep her on her feet. As we couldn’t stay on the rhumb line we ended up dropping and hoisting a jib to get us up to the island of Redonda. Unfortunately the Jib Top luff tape had pulled out so we were on the number 3 on an outboard lead. The other watch quickly took off down below to sleep.
The low was as we were rounding Saba (which is really cool to see during the day) in the middle of the night. We changed from the Jib Top to the jib. The wind was swirling around the island changing direction and velocity. As usual it was wet on deck and pitch black. As we were packing the jib into the bag on the weather side (I was about 8 foot forward of the rigging) a wave came over the bow picked me and the sail up and sent us flying aft at a very fast rate. I was trying to find something to stop myself on and ended up face planting into the caps and diagonals. There was a lot of unladylike swearing and very quickly I had a egg on my head and the left side of my face had swollen up almost to the point of not being able to use the left eye. Luckily there was no breaking of the skin and after taking an aspirin I went and sat behind the helmsman for the rest of the watch feeling sorry for myself.
This is bruising to the inside of my legs after going out on the pole.
Amazingly despite the violent nature of how the boat moves the only other injury on the crew was David (the owner) twisting his ring finger to the point that we had to cut off his wedding band. Last night at the crew meal we talked extensively about the brutal nature of the boat offshore and its short comings. After reading an account of the race by the crew of CREAM a multihull that was close to us the whole race (we finished 20 minutes ahead of them) I wonder about our sanity! They were on watch inside the cabin, hardly got wet, had warm showers while we swirled around down below with piles of sails, crawling on the cabin sole as standing was too hard and were dretched in sweat due to the heat of the sun cooking us in a dark green carbon hull.
Lou was a star on the race taking a load off of me by producing every single meal. We had dinners courtesy of HM government. I was not sold on the idea of British military food until I ate it and actually it is pretty damn good. It is hydrated vacumn packed meals like chicken and herbs, steak pot roast with dumplings etc. You boil them in the foil packages in salt water and then Lou hands them up in a bucket with a fist full of spoons. You just tear open the package and eat straight out of the foil package. Much easier than what I have done for the past 15 years!
I have to get off to the boat to get repairs done so will write more later. We did however, end up 1st in class, 4th in IRC overall and 2nd in CSA overall so it was worth it.
RSS Feed
