I am the boat captain on the new Roger 46 Yeoman. Got the boat off the tanker in Lauderdale on Monday at 6pm and went to Pier 66. On the way to Pier 66 there was an electrical burning smell so I ended up tying up off Harrier to assess situation, couldn’t find flashlights and figured out the cabin lights were shorting out on the carbon.

Spent a day dealing with customs and cruising permits as we are a UK boat and the crew were awesome putting the boat together up at 5am and bed at 12pm to get everything done. All very exciting and stressful. The boat was commissioned in December and the feeder race was the first race for the boat. Bit of a baptism of fire.

We only had 9 crew for the race down – all jet lagged from flights from the UK. The GPS went down so I kept us in deep water i.e. more gulfstream against us. We only jibed 10 times in the night. Boat was going at 14 – 25 knots and water was a times up to your knees when you were on the grinder pedastal. Boat nosedived a lot even with crew sitting behind the mainsheet and all the sails and gear aft. Lots of water down below. Fastnet on this boat will be hard requiring wetsuits. We saw 32 knots true and had 8 – 10 foot waves. No huge breakages – a little nerve racking for me though as Monday was the first time I had seen the boat and met the crew. Very tired now with a long list of things to get sorted and on my way to Lauderdale to pick up the crew van and 14 peoples gear.

We go from here to Lauderdale for three weeks in the cradle then deliver her down to Heineken regatta then to St Thomas, BVI regatta, Antigua, Dockwise to Newport, NYYC race week, block island and then load her up to go home to UK for Cowes week and Fastnet.

Photos of the Day – September 6

Santa Catalina Island

Today’s Question of the Day involves today’s Photo of the Day. Specifically, how is it possible for the crewmember of a boat to, starting from deck level, manage to get so high in the air? Mind you, he didn’t jump from the spreaders, nor was a ‘human cannon’ involved. Answer below

Answer to Question of the Day. It’s long been common for rambunctious crewmembers, mostly young males, to take a halyard to the bow of a boat, then swing themselves out alongside the boat. The goal is to get as long and high a ride as possible, hopefully letting go before slamming back into the side of the boat or landing on the deck. This is most successfully accomplished aboard boats with canting keels, as it’s possible to start out with the masthead exit of the halyard almost being off the side of the boat to begin with.

But as all males know, qualities such as bigger, faster, and higher are always admired. So the crew of the boat, in this case the 86-ft Pyewacket, got to thinking about how new heights might be scaled. The plan was actually quite simple. Put six guys on the coffee grinders, then have them grind for their lives at the instant the boatstronaut jumped off the bow. Is this a great country or what

August 28 – Newport Beach

The MaxZ86 Pyewacket, which Roy Disney donated to the Orange Coast School of Sailing, but next year will be chartering back for one or more Mexican races and yet one more TransPac, set a new elapsed time record for Long Point on Catalina Island to the Newport Pier of 1 hour and 32 minutes.

At least we think it’s a record. Those aboard who should know things like that – Costa Mesa-based pro sailor Keith Kilpatrick, long time Newport racer Craig Fletcher, and the School of Sailing‘s Brad Avery – couldn’t remember a boat having a faster time. But Avery hedged his claim a little. “You’ll probably get a couple of people who will write in and say they’ve done it faster on a multihull or sailboard, but I’m pretty comfortable that this is the monohull record.”

The believed record was set on the third day of the Newport Harbor and Balboa YC’s Long Point Race Week, a terrific event that saw the 40+ boat fleet enjoying a race over to Long Point, a second race up to Ship Rock and back, and then back to Newport.

More on that event and the attraction it would have to Northern California racers in the Wednesday ‘Lectronic.

Assuming the White’s Landing to Newport Pier course is 24 miles, Pyewacket averaged about 16 knots. The amazing thing about this is that while the wind was consistent all the way across, it never blew more than 16 knots. Pyewacket had no trouble sailing faster than the wind most of the time, peaking out with a high of 19+ knots on a close reach.Pyewacket was given a real battle by Doug Baker’s Long Beach-based Andrews 80 Magnitude, a boat that’s never really gotten her due. A somewhat less complicated and slightly shorter boat than Pyewacket, she was only a short distance to lee of the bigger boat for about half the crossing, at which point Pyewacket hoisted her #3 asymmetrical, a brutally strong Cuben fiber sail needed to stay high. Magnitude had left her similar sail – they go for about $50,000 – back in the container ashore, and therefore fell further down the rest of the way.This was the first time we’d sailed aboard Pyewacket, and we were surprised at what an absolute beast of a boat she is. That she could be so well sailed by a mostly amateur sailing school team, which was assembled after a call for tryouts on Scuttlebutt, is a tribute to both the absolute dedication of that crew and the supervision of the likes of Kilpatrick, Hogan Beattie, Fletcher, and Avery.On most boats, a reach from Catalina to Newport would involve setting one sail and getting the most out of it. That’s not how you do things at the top of the racing game. There were probably six or seven sail changes in Pyewacket’s 92-minute crossing, and two trips to near the top of the 125-ft mast.Changing sails is many times harder than it sounds, as they weigh hundreds of pounds, are like wrestling with alligators, and must be dragged up on the deck of the pitching boat and laid out in position for setting. Once this is done, the afterguard usually calls for a different sail to be brought on deck and put into position. You don’t ask questions when you’re part of the crew, you just do what you’re told. If you didn’t absolutely love it, you’d never do a second race.And who would be the bowman, probably having to do more physical work than anyone else on the boat? There wasn’t one. There was, however, a bow woman in the person of 29-year-old Ashley Perrin of Mill Valley. Although not unusually large or strong looking, Perrin was an absolute monster on the bow, relentlessly giving every ounce of her physical strength to accomplish the many jobs she had to do. It was something to see. We’ll have more on Perrin in a future issue of Latitude 38.As Pyewacket crossed the finish line at 14 knots and co-skipper Fletcher jumped overboard and swam to the race committee boat to resume his duties as race chairman, the sailing school’s Avery remarked on what a tremendous impact Disney’s donation had made to their program. The minute we entered the jetty, we could see why. There was a school of sailing launches overseeing a flock of students in Lido 14s, and as we moved up the harbor, a seemingly countless number of the school’s Shields being sailed around the bay. No matter what day you visit Newport, you see evidence of the thousands of people, of all income brackets and all physical abilities, who get to enjoy the ocean each year because of the school’s programs. If there’s a better or more well run such program in the country, we’re not aware of it, and it survives on the generosity of the likes of Roy Disney. On behalf of everyone, a very heartfelt ‘thank you’.  

This is a copy of an article posted on Sailing Anarchy written by Tom O’Keefe. Ashley of RYM did bow on the boat for the race.

A report from the R/P 86 Pyewacket on the Santa Barbara to King Harbor racer here in SoCal. Also, be sure to check out the Audio Innerview with recently did with Roy Disney. Enjoy.Friday morning we woke up at 4:00 AM to drive from San Clemente to Santa Barbara and found drizzle outside. As we traveled North, the drizzle turned to rain and phased in then out. When my wife and daughter dropped me off at SBYC, the weather had set into a persistent mist. During the dock walk I ran into several friends from past crews and the usual boat gossip/networking ran rampant. After dropping off my backpack, I made my ritual visit to the Minnow Cafe for a quick bite and then it was back to Pyewacket to start the pre race prep and get out of the rain. We checked the kites and banded an A 2 that was the only kite we found stuffed.

Around 10:30 AM the misting petered out and we rigged the boat for who knows what direction we’ll find outside. All we knew for sure is that it will be light air. At 11:00 we motored outside, checked in and raised the main. For those that have never been aboard Pyewacket, she has halyard locks on all halyards. There are 6 people grinding tagged into the utility winch to raise the main and 1 (sometimes 2) people up the mast making sure the luff rope, then top batten and luff rope again all get fed into the luff track worry free, as almost an acre of Carbon/Kevlar and Mylar gets raised. Next we raised the Code 0 on it’s furler and finally the J-2 on the fractional head stay.

We checked the line, timed our approach and got a lane reaching back and forth with the J-2. I was trimming port side and John was trimming starboard. Keith called for the Code 0 about 30 yards from the line on final approach and boom we’re doing 10 knots in 6-1/2 knots of breeze. Initially, the breeze is from SSE and clocks South as we point on port out to Santa Cruz Island. Magnitude is just to leeward and astern and After Burner is doing a good job of pacing us abeam. We seem to have a flatter Code 0 which allows us a bit more point and boat speed. But, as we approach the island the breeze starts funneling, fanning and shadowing which makes for some very interesting exchanges back and forth between Magnitude and Pyewacket.

In the end we led by a few hundred yards between the islands and bore off to our first Code A 1. Magnitude sets a very nice A 1 and carries it low of rum line. Ours is giving us decent speed pointing higher on rum line and we have footed out by a bit. Unfortunately, a lift sets in and Magnitudes inside position is now favored and our gage has only hurt us. We attempted to sail lower. But, we just could not get down to Magnitude’s line.

Now begins the long light only to get lighter reach across the bay trying to get lower and maintain speed. But, Magnitude is looking better and better. Just before dark we both threw in a jibe towards the beach. But, they were ugly and pointing back at Malibu is not a favored option. So, we jibed back toward Palos Verdes around 9:30 PM. We tried another A 1 at one point. But, both kept us about 5 degrees higher than Magnitude and across the bay that worked out to a few miles of separation. There appeared to be more pressure inside, which also benefited Magnitude and by the time we made our final gibe in Magnitude was a solid 2 miles ahead. Then it got light and ugly. We worked our way in first with the A 1 and then the Zero.

It was an extremely light air race, which can be very frustrating. But, the crew of 22 aboard Pyewacket were all very positive through out the entire race. We finished second boat for boat. So, a big congratulations are due to Magnitude and her crew. But, we also did the best on corrected time that we’ve done to date. So, to all the crew of Pyewacket, I’ve also gotta say job well done. And, Thank you to OCC and Roy Disney!

  The king’s horses and henchmen have scattered, but the $7-million chariot Pyewacket remains. Finding a crew to drive it, as it turns out, was just a matter of asking for volunteers. From our July/August 2006 issue.

  14/07/2006

  By Stuart Streuli

  When Roy Disney retired from grand prix yacht racing following the 2005 Transpac, he donated his most recent Pyewacket, an 86-foot canting-keel Reichel/Pugh design, to the Orange Coast College School of Sailing and Seamanship, in Newport Beach, Calif.

“When I first heard about it, I thought, ‘How are we going to handle this?'” says Brad Avery, the school’s director. “But the donor was very concerned with our ability to handle it and basically said, ‘Let us know what you need.’  We went back and forth for a couple of months to outline a program of how we could put the boat to use. It was very carefully done.”

The only remaining question was where to find the necessary manpower. Hiring the dozen or so professional sailors Disney and longtime sailing master Robbie Haines brought on board for each race—they sailed with 18 to Hawaii and more for buoy events—was financially out of the question, not to mention a bit off target for a teaching institution. So Avery and skipper Keith Kilpatrick, a Volvo veteran, placed a news brief into the Dec. 20, 2005, edition of Scuttlebutt’s e-mail newsletter. “Great sailors wanted,” it said.

More than 200 people responded. There were also plenty of local acquaintances from the Southern California sailing scene that personally contacted Kilpatrick or Avery, enough to staff the boat. But that wasn’t the plan. “We wanted to include people who wouldn’t usually get a chance to sail on this boat—a guy with an Express 37 or an Olson 30,” says Avery. “We view ourselves as a community sailing program.”

So they culled through the applicants, each of whom was asked to provide a brief sailing resume. Some they knew, but many they didn’t. “We wanted people who have raced offshore on boats 30 feet and above,” says Avery, “And we looked for an activity level that indicated a passion.”

From the initial 200 they chose three dozen for tryouts. Most were from the local area. But there were a few willing to travel lengthy distances, on their own dime, just to sail on Pyewacket. Ryan O’Grady lives in Connecticut, and sails regularly on big boats out of Newport, R.I. This summer he’s sailing on the 77-foot Harrier. But the lure of the canting-keel rocketship was enough for him to schedule West Coast business trips around the tryouts, practices, and races.

Ashley Perrin lives in San Francisco where she maintains and races on a Farr 40. Last summer, she went transatlantic as bowman on the 80-foot Tempest. Many sailors with Perrin’s credentials—she was Bruce Schwab’s shoreside manager during the last Around Alone—might have considered it beneath them to apply for an unpaid position, but she saw a unique opportunity to expand her sailing horizons.

“You can be a really good sailor and not be given the opportunity,” she says of sailing on boats like Pyewacket. “If you don’t like to sit at the bar and talk yourself up, you’re not going to get a ride. I’m not good at that; I don’t even drink.” But if Perrin lacks the gift of the gab while seated around a bar, she’s not short of confidence on the water. During the introductions that kicked off her tryout, Perrin volunteered to do the bow, a particularly grueling position considering the size and weight of some of the sails—the Spectra Code 3 reaching spinnaker, for example, takes four to six people to carry comfortably. “Keith and I looked at each other, because she’s a diminutive gal,” says Avery. “But we got out there sailing and she did an incredible job. At the end of the day we were amazed at how good she was.” After the two tryout sails, which were conducted in mid-March, Avery and Kilpatrick pared the list of crew candidates roughly in half and announced a crew for the 2006 Lexus Newport to Ensenada Race in late April.

At 125 miles in length, the Ensenada Race is almost too short to be considered a true offshore race—the course�
record is just 10 hours, 45 minutes. But what it lacks in length, it makes up for by crossing a border and�
attracting a mammoth fleet. The race annually draws more than 400 boats; the record of 675 was set in the early�
’80s.

For many Southern California sailors, the race is an annual event. Tom O’Keefe first made the trek to Ensenada�
when he was 13; he’s now 44 and can add up on one hand the number of races he’s missed. A lot of those races have�
been on quick boats, but none as quick as Pyewacket. “I’ve been sailing sleds since 1983,” he says. “Pyewacket has�
always been the top program on the West Coast. When I found out that the Orange Coast College was the benefactor�
of this program, I called up Brad and said, ‘How do I get on?'”

The Ensenada-bound Pyewacket team—O’Keefe, Perrin, O’Grady and some 20 other lawyers, businessmen, college students, and Olympic hopefuls—assembles the day before the race for a practice. For most of the crew it’s only the second time they’ve sailed on the boat. For some, like this reporter, it’s our virgin trip.

In some respects, the 86-footer is just another boat; most of the systems are familiar. But there are a few exceptions. There are four grinding pedestals on deck, and with the right combination of 17 foot buttons, it’s possible to use all four pedestals—a maximum of eight  grinders—to drive any of seven winches, from the two rear winches used for the runner backstays to the utility winches used for halyards. Some of the buttons connect the winches to each other, while others engage a turbo gear for maneuvers like jibing where speed is essential. Keeping the right buttons up and the right ones down at any given time is no simple task; one mistake can paralyze the entire system.

Other aspects of the boat are impressive merely because of the scale. Located near each running backstay winch is a strain gauge. Even in light air the runners are routinely tensioned to 20,000 lbs. The maximum, according to Gregg Hedrick, Disney’s longtime boat captain who is onboard for the race to lend his expertise, is 30,000 lbs.

Nonetheless, Avery was convinced the first time he took the boat out for a practice sail—a simple reach out and  back—that he and Kilpatrick could sail the boat with a volunteer crew.

Practice largely bears this out. In between meeting each other—there’s a lot of, “what was your name again?”—the�
crew runs smoothly through a handful of sail changes, checking out a few reaching sails in a light onshore breeze.

Overnight, the breeze backs to the southeast. While it’s expected to veer to the more traditional southwesterly direction during the afternoon, the start will be upwind, a rarity for this race.

The fastest monohulls start first, which is slightly disappointing as I’d been looking forward to starting last, passing 450 boats and finishing first. Since we’re the scratch boat in the Maxi A fleet by a whopping 87 seconds a mile—the rating, left over from a more powerful configuration of the boat, is a sore subject and eliminates any hope of corrected time honors—seeing a single transom will be one too many.

After a lot of discussion in the afterguard, Kilpatrick decides to go for a mid-line start, which he gets with surprising ease. There are a couple of boats below us, and a pack to windward, but we have more than enough space. Within a few minutes we have the room we need to tack and follow Windquest, a fixed-keel 86-footer, and Magnitude, a canting-keel 80-footer, both of whom are already on port, toward the new breeze.

It’s not long before the big right shift everyone is expecting moves in and we tack back to starboard with both our rivals situated on our windward hip. Together we separate from the rest of the Maxi A fleet. Initially, the gains come in spurts. After an hour or two, Windquest goes for a headsail change from a 100-percent  jib to a larger reaching sail. It proves costly as the new sail doesn’t allow the crew to sail as high, and they fall into less breeze closer to the coast. After a few hours,  it’s just a speck on the horizon. Even a change back to the original sail is too little too late.

Magnitude is tougher to shake, but eventually Doug Baker’s crew changes to a flat reaching spinnaker. Kilpatrick has sailed many miles with Magnitude and he knows this sail well. “I convinced them to buy it,” he says with a laugh. He’s sure it’s the perfect choice for these conditions, but it doesn’t seem to help and soon Magnitude, like Windquest before it, is sliding toward the horizon.

With a rookie crew, Kilpatrick is a little more judicious with the sail changes. But as the wind backs, we switch to a roller-furled masthead genoa and then, late in the afternoon, the 1A reaching spinnaker. In a light breeze that occasionally tops 10 knots, sailing the boat is quite easy, almost too easy with 26 people chomping at the bit to contribute in any way, to prove they deserve to be onboard. But in this breeze, on a fetch, the most active crewmember is the diesel engine,  which revs up anytime the angle of keel cant is changed. The boat has a sweet spot around 10 degrees of heel and in the puffy breeze, the keel moves often. Our boatspeed is rarely less than the windspeed. In fact, we spent most of the race doing between 125 percent and 150 percent of the windspeed. In 8 knots of breeze, we’re hitting 12 knots. It’s nothing near the high 20s the boat can hit surfing through the Molokai Channel to finish a Transpac. But for a group of neophytes, it’s thrilling to sail this fast in what would ordinarily be quite marginal conditions. We also know that over the northwestern horizon are plenty of poor souls struggling to maintain 4 knots.

Our average of between 9 and 10 knots inspires a few dreams of a midnight arrival. Hedrick, however, knows that�
in this race the math usually lies. Many early arrivals have been delayed when the breeze dies away upon entering�
  La Bahia Totos Santos, or as Hedrick says with a laugh, “La Bahia de los Muertos. As expected, the breeze lightens overnight, but it doesn’t die completely. Nonetheless, the Bahia lives up to it’s nickname to some extent, though it’s largely our own doing. Early Saturday morning, we’re in the midst of a sail change, from the masthead genoa to the 1A spinnaker,�
when something goes wrong.

The genoa won’t unroll all the way, and when we try to  pull it down we find out it won’t come down either. Only�
when the halyard for the spinnaker is eased does the genoa start to come down. It’s a bad sign.

As we struggle to get both sails down, I can sense the back of the boat starting to boil over. It’s late, or  actually early, but either way, it’s that time of the race  when lack of sleep makes everyone’s fuse a little short.

  Kilpatrick and tactician Craig Fletcher take turns yelling out directions from the back while a dozen eager amateur  sailors scramble around the deck looking for a solution “That door can shut so quickly in that bay and we happened to be in a little bit of breeze,” says Kilpatrick later.

“I just wanted to get across the finish line. You could see me looking over my shoulder all the time, expecting to see running lights. It takes what seems like an interminable amount of time,  but eventually we sort the halyards out. It turns out the roller furling unit at the head of the genoa caught the leech line of the spinnaker and then sucked the halyard  into the roll when we tried to furl the genoa. Just when we thought we were getting the hang of it, Pyewacket reminds us just what we’re dealing with.

We crawl across the finish line in pale pre-dawn light. It’s slightly anticlimactic. We all wanted to see and feel Pyewacket really light it up; we wanted to be pushed a bit and prove that we were up to the challenge the boat presents. Half of the crew is staying in Ensenada for the weekend. A water taxi ferries them to shore, and not 45 minutes after finishing we’re waving to the race committee boat as we pass them on our way north. We’re an hour out of Ensenada before we catch sight of Magnitude reaching toward the finish line. Windquest is still no where in sight. It’s then that it starts to dawn on me. We beat a pair of 80-footers by three hours over 125 miles.

We pass boats all the way up the coast. With each one, I smile slightly wider than I did when we passed the previous boat. This is the first time I’ve taken line honors in a distance race, much less one of the most popular distance races in the world.

By noon we’re rolling into San Diego Harbor. Even here, we’re still passing boats, spinnakers sucking whatever they can out of a light seebreeze, bows pointed toward a party in Ensenada that they’ll be lucky to make. Just before I jump ship and grab a rental car back to Newport Beach, I speak with Val Stephanchuk. While it would be impossible to determine who among the volunteers has the most sailing experience, figuring out who had the least is easy. Stepanchuk, a 24-year-old OCC student with a loose, toothy smile and scraggly beard, showed up for Thursday’s practice wearing a foam-front baseball cap, sneakers, and what could best be described as a nylon duster. He’s part of the OCC rowing team, which shares the seamanship center’s facility, hence his connection and presence on the boat. He is planning to enter a transatlantic rowing competition in 2007, but he’d never really been sailing until he joined an OCC crew sailing in last summer’s Long Point Race.

“This is the second race I’ve race in,” he says of the Ensenada Race. “It was absolutely amazing. I know not a lot of people—maybe 5 percent of the sailing world—get to sail on something like this. “It did get overwhelming at times. The main thing was figuring out the grinding system and how it works, plus a lot of sailing terms. But I loved it. I’ve sailed on the Pyewacket. It’s under my belt.”

Ashley Perrin competed aboard Lively Lady II a race report by Will Hubbard can be seen at http://www.pequotyc.com/files/Dec06PilotTABLOID.pdf

Lively Lady took home the following trophies:

St Davids Lighthouse Trophy for overall corrected time winner IRC

Maritime Museum Prize for yacht older than 15 years with second best corrected time in SDL Division ORR

William C Finley Trophy for yacht older than 15 years with best corrected time in SDL Division IRC

Thomas Fleming Day Memorial Trophy for yacht under 40 foot with best corrected time in Cruiser/Racer Division IRC

William Snaith Memorial Prize for designer of yacht winning SDL Division Dick Carter IRC

Philip S Weld Prize for Best corrected time in Class 1 IRC

Edlu Tankard Prize for Yacht with second best corrected time in cruiser/racer division ORR

George W Mixter Trophy for Navigator of yacht winning SDL Michael Lawson IRC

Corinthian Trophy for vessel with best performing all amateur crew SDL IRC

 0419, the Seventeenth of June 2006, the 1969 Carter 37 ‘Lively Lady II’ sits wallowing in the Gulf Stream, 252 miles out of Newport and competing in her fourth Newport-Bermuda race. Having battled through the 1972 race – accepted as the stormiest ever – she was fully equipped to cope with the tremendous 5 knot winds through which she and her six crew ‘battled’ – or more appropriately persevered. Nothing special, perhaps, in being becalmed, yet Lively Lady II was traveling towards Bermuda at a comfortable 6 knots SOG. Not only was she moving fast but she was ahead of over 90 boats in our division fleet of which all but one of whom owed her time under IRC. Not only was she one of the smallest, oldest and theoretically slowest in the fleet but she was also one of the prettiest. Fast-forward 105 hours and Lively Lady II is motoring in from the finish where she is passed by the great-looking Swan 44, ‘Akela III’, which owed us over 8 hours handicap but had finished behind. The crew of ‘Akela III’, drawing near, are nothing but sportsmanlike shouting over, ‘Well sailed, superb, congratulations’, offering our navigator (the Troll) a salute and taking photos of our little ship.

So how did this happen? As a 19 year old with an elder sister who has vast experience of over a decade and a half of offshore racing it was about time I was collared into something longer than a cross channel dash. Some amount of leverage won me a place on the boat whose crew included my sister – Ashley Perrin, the owner William Hubbard III, his son William Hubbard IV, Phil Wilmer and superstar ‘naviguesser’ Mike Lawson. All five were part of the winning crew of Tempest in last years Rolex Transatlantic and, with my own suspect ‘abilities’ added into the crew, made up a formidable base of talent; the multi-national crew called America, Scotland, England and Canada home.

Starting in Newport on Friday afternoon we quickly set the starboard tack precedent which was to last for 600 odd miles. Beating out of the bay, we were quickly fluttering the flag of protest in what was ultimately an empty threat. Within a few hours the fleet was split in two, with most of the bigger, faster boats going East and the rest heading for a more Westerly part of the Gulf Stream. At least we thought we were heading West; soon enough we discovered that our port compass deviated from the other by 15 degrees which would eventually lead to rapid and (for me!) vexing calculations.

It should be noted that from this point on the author has enjoyed a night at RBYC, and local time is 0500, please blame ‘Dark and Stormies’ for lowered journalistic standards.

For the first few days of the race we had light but consistent pressure, never tacking and only once ‘cheating’ on the number 1 for a brief affair with the spinnaker and a jury-rigged storm jib used as a staysail. After hitting the Gulf Stream large swells with chop and light air made keeping going the momentum of the 17,000lb boat difficult. Given that only one member of the crew sailed regularly on the boat, and two had never set foot on her until a few days before the race I feel we adapted well to the challenge of a weather helm; admittedly less of a problem than it could have been in a race where 4 knots often seemed fast and wind speed never exceeded 16 knots gusting.

In spite of the frustrating light wind conditions crew morale was kept high, and we owe much of our success to gains made between 2300 and 0700 nightly, where we were able to keep the boat moving when other crews were half asleep. A friendly and constructive inter-watch banter in terms of boat speed and gains relative to the many nearby yachts contributed further to our success. With a boat motto, ‘sail it like you stole it’ and crew breaking out in Righteous Brothers songs at 4am on the final morning we tried hard to keep cheerful in face of frustration. Other helpers in terms of morale and determination were both the continually hopeful updates provided by the much maligned tracking system and the fantastic food laid on by ‘Mother’ Hubbard – superb home cooked and frozen meals which we had but to heat up in the oven to enjoy a splendid supper.

With this ability to ‘race the shi*t’ out of the boat, as Will Hubbard put it, we were fortunate to find ourselves crossing the line with a 70 footer. This was not to say that we were sure of our IRC win; we were seriously rattled by the far too close for comfort proximity of Westray (the only boat in the entire fleet that rated lower than us). It was not until 12 hours after we finished that we were certain of our win, and the drinks then flowed free. There has been a discussion on the SA forum about the dual trophy system and about who deserves more credit and coverage – Sinn Fein or Lively Lady II. They were able to beat us – on ORR (a rating system of which none of the crew had any conception) and full credit to a great sail to them. On the other hand had they been entered in IRC they would have owed us over three hours, time which we easily made up. http://www.sailinganarchy.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=37054

At the end of the day we were all out there to have fun and sail a fast race while withstanding the sauna down below (not helped by our on board wood burning stove – no, seriously) and the frustrating winds, and that is what every boat on the water did, some just a little faster than others!!!

Written by Myles Perrin (crew on Lively Lady II)