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.

Thursday night was exciting aboard RB with unfortunately quite a bit of sail damage. The number three got washed overboard when the wind piped up and the nose buried in a large wave on a surf. It is beyond repair onboard at least with two large holes and the bolt rope is well and truly tattered. The old North Sails large kite also exploded beyond repair so we are down to frankinkite (the one I have put the tack and head back on) and a beautiful new large UK kite with great shoulders that roll to weather and give us amazing VMG.

The last two nights have been beautiful with a small crescent moon and stars that show through between squalls. We have had some very nice sunrises with the suns rays streaming through the clouds in shafts of light and rainbows being created by the rain under the squalls. Last night as the sun went down there was a yellow brick road in the sea to follow created by the moon reflecting on the sea. It also lit up the tiny droplets of water on the lifelines making them look like little drops of gold.

The Dove chocolate saying of the day is ‘People matter more than things’ not really something you can argue with!

It is hot hot hot down below and still damp but yesterday the boat looked like a laundry as everyone stripped off and had salt water baths and washed their clothes with some nice smelling soap.

Now coming to the title of the blog which was voted upon aboard!

Everyone still has the worst case of monkey butt they have ever encountered and I commented the other morning that it felt like I had the Himalayas on my arse! – not attractive I know 🙂 Also the sea state does look like a mini mountain range with two different swell sets so much nicer than the short chop around the british isles. When the wind stays up we are able to keep surfing at 10 knots+ continuously when it drops to 14 knots it is hard to keep the spinnaker full as you start surfing on the waves faster than the wind backing the spinnaker.

This afternoon we dropped the large spinnaker we had hoisted this morning and changed out the spinnaker halyard as there is quite a bit of chafe and we only have one halyard. I have rebuilt the old one so we can change out in a day or so. I really don’t want to deal with the halyard breaking and having to go up the rig to sort it all out. Before leaving SF I put two padeyes at the top of the rig so we could hang a block off and rig an external halyard if the internal one broke.

Anyways it is time to sign off and get some sleep as last night was not very conducive to it with the French contingent being French and crashing every time they were on watch and I was off!

Last night Wayne and I were on deck and I started to hear the familiar noise of dolphins jumping around the boat. They really are beautiful at night looking like torpedoes with the phosphorescence weaving around the bow and darting towards the keel. Something that has been very noticeable this trip for me is the lack of wildlife which is very saddening.

This morning the head of the spinnaker exploded so I had to go up the rig to bring down the corner after we all pulled the spinnaker in out of the water. So todays activity was a 5.5 hour sail repair luckily the wind was maxing out at 20 knots so we were able to hoist the old large spinnaker and keep on moving towards Hawaii.

We continue to play musical bunks but are now in a new watch rotation so I haven’t had to move once an hour like the beginning of the trip.
One of the crew and I got into a system of sleeping head to toe in the weather bunk with him leaving after an hour to go on watch! Amazingly the smell of each others feet has still allowed us to sleep. This is preferable to the leaking back bunk that Olivier really doesn’t seem to mind.

I lay down below laughing at the conversation on deck several times in the last few days. When the two Frenchmen are up they speak French interspersed with English terms so it sounds like blah blah blah true wind direction blah blah blah velocity made good! David went up at some point and said seeing as he hadn’t looked in a mirror lately feel free to tell him if he had a massive zit or something!

The Dove chocolates have little ‘sayings’ in them one yesterday created some funny conversation – Love comes naturally if it is a two way street – one of the crew commented I wish I knew that earlier I thought I could just pay for it! The sexual innuendos are also starting. A pertinent one is also Be extraordinary in the ordinary things of life – just doing simple things like washing up takes a lot of effort on a boat and makes you look extraordinary. I hope the guys do as much cooking and cleaning ashore as they do onboard if so their partners are pretty lucky women.

I need to sleep as have spent my last off watch sewing away so have been up for 8 hours when my body is use to lots of catnaps.

Sorry for the crass title but David just keeps on giving me great ones! During the day with the spinnaker up we are having some great sailing with continuous 13 to 14 knot surfs. The sun just started to come out and we have been gybing this morning around squalls which come through with about 27 knots of wind. The compass in the back is now leaking making that bunk even more miserable but the port one which was a nice one for a while is now getting a steady pour from the chainplate. I have got to the point where I put my feet in plastic bags before putting them in my seaboots and resorted to my drysuit a few days ago. Last night we had a little half way party with what the guys concluded was a great pinot noir. The dinner was a mexican theme which matched the southerly heading – home made chicken tomales. We followed it up with a pound cake given to us by another boat for 1/2 way with canned blackberries in syrup and canned cream.

Olivier told me in all seriousness this morning that he had come up with a great design for new foulweather gear which includes a pump system to dispense monkey butt powder continuously to your arse! We are really in an interesting sport with our topics of conversation. Wayne mentioned that the pucker factor of keeping the spinnaker up in the dark nights was a little bit much. Anyways I am going to stop my blathering and get some sleep as I only have an hour and half left off watch.

Good night!

Wet wet wet everything on RB is soaking the berths everyone’s foul weather gear and there is a run on the monkey butt powder.David complained as yet another side wave blasted us that every cup of coffee tasted like it had been made with salt water! Top speed was 19.4 with the spinnaker up and we were having a lot of fun until the tack blew out. Three hours later we had sewn the tack back onto the kite and were ready to hoist. Olivier did a great job with the sailors palm after I started to fall asleep. Lots of other boat jobs have been completed including re rigging the backstay and repairing a small hole in the main which was caused when we were reefed and the top spreader punched through it. The food continues to be amazing I don’t think I have ever been on an offshore boat which had sticky rice and pork wrapped in palm fronds on the menu. The dessert of choice this last few days has been trader joe’s chocolate ganache with mousse filling. We spent the night without the spinnaker up with just the main as it allowed us to sail closer to the direct course to Hawaii. This morning we felt some vibrations on the rudder so I stuck my head over the stern while the guys did the mainsail repair and saw two large strings of kelp on the prop shaft so we had to back down to get rid of it. Seeing as I had dunked my head in the water I decided it was time to wash my hair again so I am feeling very much more human with dry clothes and clean hair and I even much to the guys incredulity shaved my legs! Still cloudy skies and no stars at night but the water is getting warmer as is the air temperature.

Anyways time for some sleep.