I guess the pictures says it all. We have been here since 8am it is now 10:45 and the fog has thinned and thickened. A 35 knot squall came through and blew the tent down and now it is back to 10 knots. Everyone is watching youtube, working or playing on facebook…. the waiting continues.

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Next assessment at midday. We are now watching Morning Light… Genny is cringing in her seat!

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We never got out on the water so we ended up playing volleyball at the collage we are staying at. Tons of fun followed by a great dinner at the Kohler Art Center.

Waiting for wind

We are all waiting for wind here in Sheboygan – we had wind and blue skies for the clinic days but now clouds and a wind lind that is not filling into the race area. People are catching up on work on their computers and playing cards. There is a live webcam of the race course when we do start at http://syc.webhop.net:8080 for the first round robin we are hull 4 and the second we will be hull 5.
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We were sent out for an hour and half with no wind and large swell ended up anchoring and getting suffocated by the fumes from the two strokes. Then some sea fog came in and we were towed in for lunch and more playing of spoons.

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Finally we went out and sailed further south down the coast and there was some wind. At the start of the first flight the rain came in and it stayed all afternoon. Right now it is 5:45pm and pouring with rain. We got all out races done and had a bye the last flight so we came on home. The rest of the boats are out there two races behind us – after our flight racing was abandoned but everyone was to stay on the water. There were large wind shifts happening out there. So at the end of the 1st round robin we won 5 and lost 1 race.

The fleet finishing off racing in the rain and low lying sea fog.

I am in Wisconsin at the moment doing a match racing clinic and some racing with Kristen Lane and her crew. Next week I will be training with Genny Tulloch who is part of the US Olympic Squad. I am looking forward to next week with some great coaches (Dave Perry and Vince Brun) and sailing the new Elliot 6m’s which look like big dinghies. They are currently being put together – the keels are not yet on the boats and the masts are in racks being rigged.

Terry Kohler whose boat I sailed many years ago in the Mac races funds basically the whole deal and there are a lot of places named after him – credit unions, villages. He is the Kohler who makes the faucets on most of your sinks and the toilets in your bathrooms. He has set up an amazing facility in the middle of Sheboygan.

We are staying at a collage in the middle of the countryside about 30 minutes from the sailing center. The halls of residence are much fancier than anything I experienced at university and I don’t think they have ever been used as they smell of new paint and carpets. The kitchens and cupboards are spotless the only problem is the lack of kitchen implements to we have to eat out. The Northern Lights event is well funded and provides us with a great breakfast and lunch everyday.

We arrived yesterday and today had a morning of chalk talks and then rigged the boats and did boat handling practice for two hours. I got a little too close to Genny’s elbows in a spinnaker drop and ended up bleeding from a split lip and my nose for a good 20 minutes. I couldn’t stop laughing at the situation which just made it bleed even more! Liz Baylis ended up going back in and getting me an ice pack for my face and nose once it stopped we started up again. It is fun to be back in a small boat where the result of your crew weight positioning is so obvious and the short courses put a premium on boat handling.

After lunch and watching some video of the morning session it was back out on the water for some windward and leeward mark approaches following by another classroom session. A long day 9am to 6pm! Time for bed and some rest before another long day tomorrow.

It was an epic weekend of sailing at Hood River. It is 3:30am and after a 11 hours drive home. Top speed of 15.4 SOG against the river current it really was a blast.

I wasn’t able to get my act together to take 116 Flashman up to Huntington last week so instead I went up on 106 Numa Boa. We had 5 days of great close racing in mostly flat water number 1 weather. The camping was fun and relaxing despite a few days of nearly freezing conditions. The smores were delicous as were all the great meals put together by Mark and Gilles and their other halves. I enjoyed just having to show up with a sleeping bag and tent and getting to go sailing without all the organisational effort. Everyone learnt more about how to sail Moores and I managed to measure quite a few rig set ups so I can decide what to do with ours. Just had some good friends over for dinner and I am racing friday, a wedding on saturday and racing on sunday.

Have a great rest of the week.

Since I got back from Italy I did
the Spinnaker Cup,
worked on the Saga 409 and we went out for our first test sail,
started sailing in Wednesday night match racing practice races in Tiburon on J22s,
did some Friday nights on the moore 24,
worked with my brother in his yard,
went to the premiere of UP the Pixar animated movie (one of our crew is a fix animator of the movie),
had a great time with my nephew and mother at the beach,
took my nephew to a BBQ at some friends,
been to Monterey for two days of diving and learning how to take apart regulators and tank valves and worked on a bunch of boats. So it has been a busy last three weeks.

Right now I am in Long Beach for a Grade 3 match racing event called Ficker Cup sailing with Bruce Stone. We had practice yesterday against Sally Barkow with Dave Perry coaching. Today we had 5 races and ended up winning 3 and losing 2. So we now are tied for second in points but are third in a count back out of 5 boats. Amazingly for us we beat Dave Perry (the guy who writes the rule books!). Tomorrow will be the second round robin so we hope to keep up the good results.

This is written in Seahorse by Andrew McIrvine Commodore of RORC who was onboard Yeoman regarding the Carib 600.

This is written by the CEO of RORC.

Day four of Antigua and it was an early start to the day. Gear breakages (not on Yeoman XXXII) have left our fleet with two boats – Rio and us. The conditions in Antigua have been beautiful with large rolling waves, hot sun and 15-20 knot winds. Today we had squally conditions with one squall giving us over 30 knots during which our downwind surf was interrupted by a slight mishap with the spinnaker when the wind shifted in the squall and we had to drop in a hurry to make it to the mark. But I am getting ahead of myself!

Second day was a race around the Island and we had 5 boats on the line for our start – Lee Overly the Cookson 50 formerly Chieftain is coming out for the Ocean Series as is Sojana. It was a course that provided many sail changes starting with a beat then bearing off to a reach, a run, a reach and a beat home. We used the J3, A5, A2, A0, JT, GS and SS and with constant trimming by the guys and some really nice surfs where we were constantly in the high teens we were able to beat the Cookson 50 on handicap but couldn’t keep up with the TP52. Unfortunately on the last beat home Windemere who was behind us retired from racing with breakages (I don’t know what) and they have not been out on the race course since.

Day three was a nice relaxing start to the day with a later start. With only two of us on the line we did a match racing start and were successfully holding Rio above layline to the start line until we made too much movement forward and they were able to get enough momentum to get out of the situation by ducking our stern. They had good momentum and were able to power out from under us. At least it made things a little more interesting as with them owing us around 5 minutes per hour we end up sailing around on our own the rest of the day. Despite this the guys are doing a great job of keeping the pressure on and sailing the boat as close to 100% as possible. One of the highlights of the day was seeing two whales breaching off to weather on the upwind leg. It was a close finish with us being around 50 seconds off the TP on corrected time – so many places we could have picked that up but that is the case with any race.

Today day four as I mentioned was an early start with two long races. Thankfully the race committee was persuaded to shorten the second race as it was the same course as race 1 and we had taken 3 hours to do the first race. The race had lots of corners making it hard work for the crew and very crew work intensive. We match raced Rio and the second race had a really great start a good 1.5 boat lengths ahead of Rio hitting the line at top speed on time. A great start to a race that we felt we were doing really well in until our spinnaker mishap. The wind was moving from 080 to 115 and we saw over 30 knots in one of the squalls with it above 19knots most of the rest of the time. There was some rain in the squalls closing the visibility down a little bit. Just as a fun little bit of information – Rio the TP52 is called Rio after Simon Le Bon’s song – Simon sails on the boat as he is a good friend of the owner.

Tomorrow was meant to be a 70 mile race downwind to Redonda and back to Antigua. But all things that go down must go up and we decided the concept of a 35 mile beat on our lonesome was not appealing. So with Rio we petitioned the race committee to shorten the course to a mark that the smaller boats are using. So still a 8am start time but it is only a 35 mile race – thank you race committee! The Cookson 50 and Sojana I believe will be doing the full distance.

We had a cameraman onboard Yeoman XXXII today. There are are a few good shots of us. The stern wave footage is off the back of the boat while we are roaring downwind.

A donkey crossing the normally very busy street to Nelson’s dockyard. Where are all the race boats?

Today was the first day of Antigua Race Week. I delivered the boat here from Tortola on Monday – 36 hours of beating into up to 35 knots (mostly low 20’s) and large confused seas with some breaking waves. We arrive to a bustling marina that just finished up with classics week however now the docks are eerily empty in Falmouth Harbor. The classics have moved off and the superyachts are leaving early for the med. There is a very large decrease in the number of race boats from when I was here with Yeoman in 2007. I have the pick of what ever berth I want – there isn’t a fight for the best berths alongside vs med moored. The beer tent area is so quite that one crew member remarked it was like a Wednesday night beer can party.

This year is the first year they are trying out a new format mixing some inshore and mini offshore days and the racing classes are all based out of Falmouth/English Harbor. As a boat captain I am very happy we don’t have to anchor out at Jolly Harbor which means I can sleep well in the knowledge the boat is tied up at the dock instead of waking up to check the anchor hasn’t dragged and sleeping on a hot and mosquito infested boat.

The tactician on the boat is Andy Beadsworth – the boat and I are under charter – and the crew is all pro. The last two days we have been out practicing in the afternoons after working on boat jobs in the mornings. This morning the organizers reduced the number of racing classes from 4 to 2 as many of the boats in class 2 and 3 did not want to do the long races that are planned for us.

We left the dock and hour and half before our start and did the normal pinging of the line. Small upwind, hoist the kite a gybe and drop the kite. We noticed Leopard upwind of us doing the same and then they dropped the main. They motored passed on their way into Falmouth and it was very obvious they would not be lining up against us this week. The boom was snapped in half at the vang a huge shame for those guys to be out of a regatta without even sailing a race. So with them out we were down to 3 boats in our class with the Cookson 50 coming out for the mini offshore. We had some fun sailing the boat today with a top speed of 20 knots. The wind speed was average of 19 knots and the waves were the typical Antiguan rollers. However, it really did feel like yet another day out practicing with the distinct lack of boats in the vicinity. Tomorrow is an early start off the dock at 8:30am for the round the island race – all in one go for the racing divisions.