While the big bad trimarans ripped down the course on the San Diego to Puerto Vallarta race, with the MOD 70 Orion setting a record of 2 days, 8 hours, 33 minutes, the rest of the fleet is hitting a fair bit of light air. Here is the report from KMag on the TP 52 Destroyer…
It is Tuesday and it has been eventful to say the least. After a respectable start we started losing ground fast. So I started going through the motions of why we were so off the pace. Backed the boat down twice (we are one of the only ones without a kelp cutter) and then we started getting a vibration that reminded me of Transpac on the 125…. Not again I am thinking. So we talk about what could be wrong.. all the time going slow. The wind came up last night and the vibration got really bad. in 20kts of wind I was struggling to break free and barely hitting 17 for a top speed.
Fast forward to today and we are lazily sailing in 7kts of wind. I had had enough… Time for GoPro. And to my horror what do I see? Something that looks like a 20ft piece of rope hanging off the keel! So time to stop the boat and investigate. Sails down and Squezy (Eduardo Jr) goes in the water for some action (we have good video of this). He comes up with a massive piece of kelp that was wrapped around the keel. Shit! Well at least we are clean now!
Now we have the 2A up and a pretty good angle and still in the game to some extent (have to stay positive out here). It always seems to be something.. but hey that’s what offshore sailing is all about right? Track the fleet here.
Keith Magnussen
