A Day in the Life
If you’ve not done a race like Transpac, this report from Jon Shampain on the S/C 50 Horizon does a good job showing what it’s often like...
Yesterday and last evening did not treat team Horizon well. First, in the AM the breeze got quite light for 6 hours and we seemed not to be able to escape it. To make matters worse or at least to make us feel worse, Reinrag, that infamous J-125 was visible at roll call and within a few hours vanished over the horizon (no pun intended). This morning at roll call they had moved up nicely in their division. Finally at mid day the breeze started to fill in and by dark we were again sailing in 20+ with the big 2A and loving life. Smoking down a course right for the Molokai way point seeing high teens & low 20’s as the breeze continued to build. As the afternoon wore on the 1st squalls started arriving with puff to 30…yahoo! As daylight left, an inky black night descended upon us waiting for the moon to rise and it was about then that the kite halyard failed and an all hands on deck was called for damage control.
Within 15 minutes we had dragged the kite aboard, reset the 4A and we were off. Luckily for us the moon had risen and the rest of the night was a blast, some of the best and fastest trade wind sailing any of had done in a while. The breeze lasted until Fridays roll call and then backed off some, lifted and now we are sailing in 15-18 kts of easterly. Most of the morning was spent trying to drop another red spinnaker halyard which we haven’t had much luck with. But we have a plan and you know how we love a plan. We lost some miles to our class in the process.
hip
Hip out
