show ’em your transom

You can say what you want about the competition, but Brad Van Liew dealt with an extremely tricky Atlantic en route to a stomping 700 mile victory over Polish racer Gutek in the first leg of the Velux 5 Oceans Race.  You may remember Brad doing similar things to the Open 50 fleet in the 2002-3 Around Alone, and if he can continue this kind of pace (and nearly a 12-knot average through the minefield that was the first leg is damned impressive), he’ll walk away with the kind of victory he did back then – a total rout.  And maybe, just maybe, this will push him to try his hand at the kind of event that Bilou just won.  A major-race US IMOCA presence with Brad as the distinguished statesman and someone like Ryan Breymaier as the up-and-comer would be improve that scene immensely, in our opinion.

Brad was one of the original Anarchists, and he’s supported SA for almost as long as the site has existed.  So we’re naturally stoked for him, but stoked also for the smackdown that a US solo ocean racer has handed an international fleet.  It’s been a long, long time since that happened, and we hope to see more of it in the future.  If you have questions you’d like to ask Brad about his 28-day leg, his boat, or his future – or anything else you can think of – post them in this thread and we’ll ask Brad when we do a Skype interview with him tomorrow.  Best question gets a well-worn Team Lazarus/Le Penguin t-shirt, and we hope you like XL.

Check out the Velux thread here. Photo from the spectacular Ainhoa Sanchez  and more at her site