Thought I would write a quick boat captains diary type thing – feel free to say this is boring – but thought it might be another perspective seeing as my class is covered by people better qualified to write about on the water!Yesterday up at 6:30am bed at 10:30pm – doing logistics all day including dinner of roast chicken for 14, home depot run for fender board, pharmacy to increase first aid kit usefulness, store to get 15 crates of water, 6 crates of Gatorade more food, home to unload, U-Haul to take truck back, back to hotel to order parts online, to dock with beer for crew coming back from training and parts, call electrician to change shore power cord so that it will power our British boat (no one should steal our cord at this point as it will plug into a US boat but will fry the boats electrical system if they do!!), beer tent for 10 minutes, cook dinner of fingerling potatoes, roast chicken, salad (oven wouldn’t work so had to take chicken to another apartment!), work of booking flights for rest of season, bed at 10:30pm.

6:00am alarm goes off
6:30 check emails online regarding delivery crew logistics for boat going to Caribbean and back up to Lauderdale
7:00am put out breakfast for 14 and make sandwiches for 13 one crew walks in and says they are sick so the spare crew is woken to sail for the day. I move positions from floater to second pit to take sick crews place.
7:20am at the boat finishing off job list (some crew have already been down to put grinder back together as it sheared in practice day, also computer is not working think video card is fried) normal boat prep sails on, rigging. quick conversation with relevant people on what my new tasks are for the day as secondary pit
8:10am leave the dock
9am up the rig tuning D2s
10am start of race light air good race for us, it was always going to be an interesting day as this was the first time the boat had EVER been raced inshore windward leeward, normal in between races of packing kites, wolfing down food
3pm back at dock and work on job list which includes moving mast butt, increasing rake on rig with new toggle, fixing starboard primary which won’t switch gears properly, rig check etc.
4:30pm up top of rig lubing sheaves
5:30pm scrubbing deck
6pm still working on rig tune, cleaning boat
6:20 – 6:30pm 10 minutes in beer tent having a coke with the owner and discussing my delivery crew for Caribbean and when I am leaving
6:35 – 7:30 cook pasta with white sauce, salmon, mushrooms, asparagus, carrots, green beans for 14 crew, cheated and used paper plates so less cleaning up!!
9pm – more logistics – booking of rental cars and ordering of parts online
9:45pm about to sign off of SA and hopefully go to bed for a 6am wake up
10pm should be falling into bedBTW have a massive cold and flu – anybody else have it……………

Press Release http://www.rogersyachtdesign.co.uk/news_press.php?RECORD_KEY%28hotnews%29=news_code&news_code(hotnews)=34

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.