{"id":69,"date":"2005-06-01T14:24:37","date_gmt":"2005-06-01T22:24:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.racingyachtmanagement.com\/blog\/?p=69"},"modified":"2005-06-01T14:24:37","modified_gmt":"2005-06-01T22:24:37","slug":"day-11-transatlantic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racingyachtmanagement.com\/blog\/day-11-transatlantic\/","title":{"rendered":"Day 11 – Transatlantic"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Bugs Baer<\/o:p><\/span>
\nTempest passed through a stretch of unexpectedly light wind on Wednesday<\/span><\/tt> afternoon, but by night she was back at full speed. During the day, a<\/span><\/tt> full-court press by the whole crew fixed her broken sails and brought her<\/span><\/tt> computers back to snuff.<\/span><\/tt><\/p>\n

Will Hubbard caught the spirit of the operation. \"On the upper deck, we have<\/span><\/tt> reacher repairs. On the lower deck, we have the spinnaker loft. The doctor<\/span><\/tt> is holding sick bay, and Ashley Perrin is taking orders for bags made from<\/span><\/tt> Tempest's torn sails.\" Tomas Mark and his team of staplers and<\/span><\/tt> staple-pullers ran the industrial sewing machine on deck. Ashley Perrin and<\/span><\/tt> Kevin McMeel cut and glued spinnaker patches below. Then the spinnaker team<\/span><\/tt> got its turn on the sewing machine, and during the afternoon the big sail<\/span><\/tt> went up again. The spectra luff rope was changed to nylon line which would stretch with the spinnaker cloth and there were no problems with the sail again. <\/span><\/tt><\/p>\n

We are treating the spinnakers carefully. We constantly watch the relative<\/span><\/tt> wind meter. When the heavy chutes see relative wind over 16 knots, we bring<\/span><\/tt> them down. The wind has been cooperative, often coming up to the top speed,<\/span><\/tt> then dropping back. We have been seeing 11's and 12's on the speedo all<\/span><\/tt> through the night.<\/span><\/tt><\/p>\n

Our on-shore weather forecasts have been nearly perfect, but this afternoon<\/span><\/tt> we ran into a wind hole. For several hours it was far short of the predicted<\/span><\/tt> 25 knots of true wind, and we wallowed along at boatspeed of less than ten<\/span><\/tt> knots. You<\/span><\/tt> know that somewhere else, your competitors have wind and are moving, and you<\/span><\/tt> can't do anything about it.<\/span><\/tt><\/p>\n

Our navigator, Michael Lawson, rebuilt the boats computer while the boat rolled, bounced and<\/span><\/tt> dripped with moisture. The low point came two days ago when the broach that broke<\/span><\/tt> our preventer overturned Michael's coffee mug right into his laptop. Coffee<\/span><\/tt> oozed between every key, and the screen went dark.<\/span><\/tt> Now he went to<\/span><\/tt> work on the laptop -- taking it apart, wiping surfaces dry with paper<\/span><\/tt> towels, then using the boat's hair drier to dry the rest. And lo and<\/span><\/tt> behold -- it didn't work! All the rest of us would have been stumped.<\/span><\/tt> Michael has all the navigation programs, the computer maintenance programs,<\/span><\/tt> and the weather programs on his machine. Neither Kevin McMeel's laptop,<\/span><\/tt> used for downloading satellite images, nor the boat's computer, used for<\/span><\/tt> this email and other boat management programs, can do what Michael's computer<\/span><\/tt> can.<\/span><\/tt><\/p>\n

So what did Michael do? He went to the fourth computer, the one Ashley had tucked in her sea bag. He loaded all the<\/span><\/tt> programs on to hers and we are running again. Our course is now aimed at a narrow band of<\/span><\/tt> strong winds between two weather systems, and our information is flowing. I<\/span><\/tt> wonder if somewhere, tucked away, there is a fifth computer.<\/span><\/tt><\/p>\n

The news comes in that Mari-Cha has passed the first finishing line at The<\/span><\/tt> Lizard and has broken the record for this race. The second and final finish<\/span><\/tt> will be at the Isle of Wight<\/st1:place>. In general, the bigger boats are benefiting<\/span><\/tt> more from the heavy wind than the smaller boats, Tempest being the one small<\/span><\/tt> boat doing well thus far. We hope our winds stay strong.<\/span><\/tt><\/p>\n

At midnight our watch went back up for its four-hour hitch. As we barreled<\/span><\/tt> along at full speed, Max Hutter, standing near the companionway, noticed a<\/span><\/tt> discoloration around his feet. It was oil, spurting from the hydraulic<\/span><\/tt> system of the mizzenmast. Another equipment problem to be fixed. What else<\/span><\/tt> is new?<\/span><\/tt><\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/span><\/tt><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Bugs Baer Tempest passed through a stretch of unexpectedly light wind on Wednesday afternoon, but by night she was back at full speed. During the day, a full-court press by the whole crew fixed her broken sails and brought her computers back to snuff. Will Hubbard caught the spirit of the operation. “On the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-race-reports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingyachtmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingyachtmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingyachtmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingyachtmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingyachtmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingyachtmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingyachtmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingyachtmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingyachtmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}