Heroics, Part 2

It’s been almost ten months since we began this voyage around the world by crossing the Atlantic twice; first east-to-west to Brazil (to avoid the widest part of the doldrums off the western coast of Africa) and secondly west-to-east down to the southern tip of Africa. On this race, our 13th of 14, we crossed the Atlantic a third and last time. After a few frigid days of beating into the prevailing winds, we reached the area just off the southern tip of New Foundland known as the Grand Banks (site of “The Perfect Storm”).

We found no storm at all. We were essentially becalmed.


Normally, working at the bow equates to getting soaked in sea water. In those days of low winds, however, the bow remained completely dry. As we crept towards the southern tip of New Foundland, we had a new hazard to deal with: icebergs.

We established a 24 hour a day Iceberg Watch, requiring someone to be stationed at the bow 24 hours a day, scanning the horizon. At night or if fog was present (as it most often was), someone was also deployed down to the Nav Station to monitor the radar screen for any icebergs detectable.

Drifting along in the low winds, occasionally we’ve dropped to only a knot of speed, if that. Frustrating as that might have been in regards to reaching Cork, it nevertheless gave me many magical moments to savor, particularly during night Iceberg Watches. Sitting or even standing on the pulpit, leaning against the forestay, I would feel as if I was hovering a few meters above the glassy water. Before me I saw nothing but a horizonless curve of pearlescent dark gray sea water ghosting beneath my feet. Ahead, the sea merged seamlessly into a fuzzy dirty white overcast above.

Trusting in the security of my safety strap, I’d grasp the forestay with one hand and lean out over the water, feeling like a square rigger’s figurehead. At night it was easy to imagine being at the nose of a spaceship moving through the emptiness of space since there was the enjoyably disorienting lack of a clear horizon and no sound but the quietest of tinkling of the small bow wake below.


At that point we had only two weeks left in the entire circumnavigation, having spent 40 weeks in getting that far. It’s been great but I am ready to move on. Still, moments such as those iceberg watches on crisp nights under a featureless sky and above a whispering sea are some of the things I've treasured in this last year.




After being lulled into a frustrating boredom by the calm seas we initially found, we were to discover we still had two Atlantic storms with which to contend.

The first I’ll write about later, in whatever epilogue I compose once we finish in Liverpool. The second, the lessor of the two, came on slowly in the afternoon of June 25th, when the skies turned gray and the water a slate green color.


When I came on watch at 8:00 p.m. that night, the previous crew had just replaced the mid-weight spinnaker for the heavy weight. The winds were rising and a challenging night was anticipated. It wasn't long before the winds were 30kts or so with gusts up to 35kts, sometimes more. The waves were building and rocking the boat so drastically that it was hard to keep the spinnaker inflated. By the time 10:00 p.m. rolled around and it was approaching my turn to helm, I sat in the snakepit, holding the line controlling the vang with only three turns of it wrapped around the central halyard winch.

The main sheet controls the angle of the boom and, therefore, the angle of the sail (essentially a wing) in relation to the wind. The vang (sometimes called the kicker) is a block and tackle between the base of the mast and the bottom of the boom. When the wind pressure is high on the sail, it wants to pull the boom upwards and form the sail into half a funnel, allowing the wind to dump out of it's trailing edge. The vang resists this motion and keeps the sail shaped more like a wing.

When a boat is threatened with being unexpectedly overpowered by a gust, the quickest way to respond is to release the vang, allowing the sail to curl and loose all it’s power. The second but less effective response is to ease the main sheet, allowing the mainsail to swing out to a less aggressive angle to the wind. Returning to the wing analogy, easing the main would be a bird changing the angle of its wings. Easing the vang would be as if a bird folded its wings.

In certain circumstances (such as that Wednesday night) someone holds the line leading to the vang with only a few turns on the winch, creating just enough friction for a moderate grip to hold it fast. All it takes, then, to dump the vang is to release one’s grip. Someone also stands 'Shotgun,' i.e., by the mainsheet with it also down to three turns on a winch.

Sitting at the vang that night, awaiting my turn to helm, I looked back and was relieved to find Skipper Mark on the helm. Mark never takes the helm except when it’s absolutely necessary. Despite the level of confidence I’ve gained in helming over these last ten months at sea, I wasn’t too keen on taking the helm that night in those conditions.

My watch leader Koh Kok Siong had already spent quite some time on shotgun so I volunteered to relieve him. I moved into the central position in the photo below, poised to release the mainsheet at a moment’s notice.


We were doint 13-15kts in this wind and occasionally surfing down waves a 19 kts. It was exhilarating and we knew we were making great gains on other boats not in this storm, but the drain on the crew and, more importantly, Mark at the helm was severe.

Standing next to Mark with the mainsheet in my hands, I volunteered, “So basically we’re going to fly the kite until you need sleep, right?” He had a short moment to chuckle before muttering an expletive as a wave rolled us so hard to the left that the kite was back winded and began to collapse against the wrap net.

Still muttering obscenities under his breath, Mark fought to maneuver the boat so as to gently re-inflate the spinnaker. If it re-inflates too quickly, it will pop open like the apartment building-sized parachute that it truly is (see the photos in the previous blog entry) and impose huge forces on the lines, halyards, and shackles controlling it. Perhaps a month ago a sudden re-inflation of the kite in similar conditions snapped the metal shank of shackle as thick as my ring finger as easily as if it had been a piece of chalk, setting one corner of the spinnaker free and necessitating an immediate emergency drop of the spinnaker in the worst of conditions.

This is what we were trying to avoid that Wednesday night.

Finally at 11:00 p.m. Mark could take no more. “Prepare to drop the kite,” he shouted over the wind. “It’s too hard to control.” To me he volunteered in a lower voice, “My arms are about to fall off.”

To be safe, we woke the oncoming watch a bit early to have more manpower available. For 30 more minutes, then, Mark still had to fight to control the spinnaker while everyone set up for the what was anticipated to be a brutal effort. As we prepared for the drop, a gust came through and added extra pressure to the sails. The boat, already heeled at a 30 degree angle, leaned harder and harder to port.

Mark shouted, “VANG!!” but nothing happened. Whomever was on the vang (I’ve never learned who it was, it being too dark and I too busy in the aftermath of that moment to see) had somehow gotten the line tangled in something and the mainsail remained fully powered. At the same moment, the urgency of the need being obvious, I’d released the mainsheet fully and let the boom swing out completely towards the water, it almost striking the waves since we were heeled over so far at this point. This helped slow the increasing heel of the boat but it didn’t stop it.

Mark was screaming now in a high pitched voice, “DUMP THE VANG! GET THE FUCKING VANG OFF THE WINCH!”

We were being threatened with a broach; when the boat's heeling to one side becomes so severe that the rudder is pulled up out of the water on the other side and the helm loses all ability to control the boat. Once this happens, the spinnaker will first lay the boat flat onto the downwind side then, with no rudder or keel resisting it, spin the boat in a flash close to 180 degrees to the point upwind where the spinnaker will now completely re-inflate backwards, popping the boat violently upright with the spinnaker tangled in the shouds and spinnaker pole and, most likely, ripped to shreds.

In time (just in time) the vang was released and the boat eased up a bit. The gust died and the boat recovered a bit more. I started the process of grinding the mainsheet back in.

It was only a few minutes later that everyone one was in place for the spinnaker drop and we brought it down. I had moved into the cockpit to join the other three who were pulling it down into the companionway. After it was successfully below decks and no longer a threat to anyone or anything, I asked Mark if I should go back to shotgun, go forward and help with the tidy up of all the lines on the foredeck, or go below and help fold the kite.

“Actually,” he said, “take the helm.”

With no headsails up and nothing more than the main eased out to the shrouds, we were still doing 9 kts. When I took the wheel, Mark slumped down to take a seat by the mainsheet winch, too exhausted to move any further for the moment.

Ahead of us, in the dark under the dim glow of the deck light, the rest of the crew moved about the deck tidying up the spinnaker lines, guys, sheets, and halyards. We were setting up to hoist the Yankee 2 to be poled out "Wing and Wing" as a replacement for the dropped kite. In the heavy rain and air thick with mist, everyone's bright red foul weather gear with day-glo yellow hoods were only moving mounds of dull red with dim white tops to Mark and I back at the helm. Their muffled voices reached us over the wind noise, some rising with directions, some acknowledging, some offering requests, and some moving around silently getting done what needed to be done without any direction at all. No one voice dominated. The group worked fluidly as a team.

I pointed out that representation of teamwork to Mark, adding that witnessing those moments during such challenging times were the times I felt best about being on this boat.

“I was just thinking the same thing,” he said, heaving another exhausted sigh.

I wish I had a picture to offer of the moment, for my own memory's sake if nothing else, but in the rain at night in a heaving sea, none would have been possible. Those moments really aren’t about how they look, however. They’re about how they feel…how they feel to all of us.

Those kinds of moments, be they the thrill of dropping a spinnaker in a storm or quiet Iceberg Watches at night on the very tip of the pulpit on a calm sea...those kinds of moments are the things I’ll miss the most in the times that follow the end of this race.

Standing at the helm while the rest of the crew worked, as we closed in on Cork still three days away, I thought to myself that perhaps, after all, we did deserve to look a bit heroic in some video footage now and then.

A Perfect Birthday for Dennis

(Many of the images used in the story below were taken by the press boat as we flew across the finish line under full spinnaker)


Dennis O'Sullivan joined our boat for both legs 5 (Hawaii to Santa Cruz) and 7, this last one from Jamaica to Liverpool. Born in the harbor town of Cork, Ireland, he's always been fascinated by the sea and all the classical literature of the sea travel. As his 60th birthday approached, he wondered if he had it in him to endure some of the challenges he'd been reading about all his life.

Though Dennis now lives in England, he still considers Cork his home and spends a few months of each year there. This stopover in Cork, Ireland had not been even rumored until a few months before the race start and not an assured part of this race's schedule until the race had already been a full month underway. When Dennis signed up for the Clipper Ventures race two years ago, then, he could not have fathomed the perfect birthday he was setting up for himself.

Dennis' birthday is June 28. At the slow pace we started off out of Nova Scotia (more about that in a later blog), it seemed unlikely we'd be in Cork by July 3rd, to say nothing of any day in June. We caught the a tail end of a low pressure system 750 miles from the finish, however, and blew in under the heavyweight spinnaker, logging 250 miles a day.

We flew that heavyweight spinnaker right down to the finish line as we found the Clipper boat Jamaica on our tails when the sun rose on the 28th, only a few miles back and seemingly closing in. We were confident we could hold them off for the last 80 miles into Cork, but it wasn't certain.

With 20 miles to go and still every opportunity available to blow our slim lead over Jamaica, Skipper Mark shouted over the wind noise, "Dennis!" Up by the grinder, working the winch controlling the spinnaker sheet, Dennis turned around.

"Take the helm," Mark said.

A spontaneous cheer arose among those on deck for we all knew what was unfolding: Dennis, at the helm, on his 60th birthday, racing into the port of his birth, with his wife, family and friends waiting. I had nothing to do with anything about it all but even I was beside myself with excitement. I could only imagine what Dennis must have felt.

"Couldn't get any better," he muttered under his breath to me as the miles to the finish line wound down one by one. "Couldn't get any better."


The second we passed the lighthouse on one side of the narrow entrance to the harbour, a cannon fired from the other shore where the race committee sat at a pub (no doubt drinking pints of Murphy's stout).


One second later Mark shouted "SPIKE!"...

...and someone already hoisted up to the end of the spinnaker pole on a halyard jammed a thin spike into the releasing mechanism of the shackle holding the upwind corner of the spinnaker...

...allowing it to fly free like a flag behind the mainsail.


Four crew (two on the winches in the snake pit, two on the lines themselves in front of the mast) worked hurriedly to ease both of the two spinnaker halyards out as fast as possible and yet still under control. Four more crew gathered around the companionway to haul the spinnaker down below decks and out of the wind.



Being able to manuever the boat to use the mainsail to block any wind trying to re-inflate the spinnaker is a key aspect to dropping a spinnaker, a luxury we sacrificed inside this narrow harbor to ensure we held onto our narrow lead over Jamaica until the very last moment.

We got the spinnaker down safely and Mark took the helm so that Dennis was free to stand just ahead of the mast as we motored to our dock, waving to friends and family either in boats motoring beside us or gathered on the shore.

Couldn't get any better," he'd say from time to time.

Heroics

Position 46 08N, 58 01W. At the pre-race crew briefing before this final 2300 mile ocean crossing, we previewed the first installment of the ten segment TV production covering our race. In the US and Canada, it will eventually be shown on the Outdoor Life Network. Watching it, I was struck by how heroic our exploits look when shown in slow motion with dramatic background music.

Below decks during a passage through rough seas, feeling like you're being tossed around like a towel in a dryer just seems like a challenge to endure, nothing more. Seeing the helicopter footage of the same moment, however, with the bow piercing wave after wave and the foredeck crew awash in sea water while the music builds suitably...well, it was hard not to feel some tinge of pride in what we're doing.

That's an emotion I've fought hard to avoid, for all around me I see that each of us are little different than anyone you'd meet on the street, except that we're here, not there.

The people around the world that I've spent this time with have the most to do with what I've treasured in this voyage. The work of sailing is the vehicle, not the journey. One of the reasons I've chosen to take part in this circumnavigation was to confirm my belief that people all around the world are the same: they are good.

Such has been my experience...particularly so, it would seem, in Nova Scotia.

One last bit of Nova Scotian Hospitality

The local tourist board arranged for one last delight for our stay in Nova Scotia. Any member of my boat's crew willing to get up early and brave the cold was treated to a private lobster harvesting trip.

We all had the chance to handle the catch and band the claws. Most were one to two pounds but we did haul in a five pounder. The largest they'd ever caught in these waters, we were told, weighed 11 pounds.

After gathering enough for us all, we dropped them in a pot of boiling water setting on the ships heater down in the hold while we motored back to the dock. Once the lines were secure, we ate them as fresh as could possibly be.

I really am loving this place...but it is time to go. We're all eager to see this voyage to it's final end and get on with our lives afterwards.

Most of this last crossing of the Atlantic promises to consist of spinnaker work. I'd made two videos about spinnakers during the Santa Cruz to Panama trip but haven't had the chance to post them yet. I wanted to show how much work a spinnaker is, both flying off the mast and collapsed below decks. You'll find these videos below.

We leave for Cork, Ireland tomorrow at noon. It should take about two weeks.

Nova Scotia

Jamie left this morning at 6:00 a.m. We had so much fun here together, people think she's my girlfriend. Where to start...or, more accurately, could I ever finish describing the great time we've had in Nova Scotia. I'm definitely coming back.

It all began with meeting Michelle, a woman standing on the dock above our boat, looking so full of enthusiasm. I had the time so I stopped and asked if she'd like to have a tour of the boat. I'd just given one to a old, pot-bellied man only 15 minutes before so, even though Michelle was beautiful, I figured I'd pre-balanced the karma and wasn't playing favorites.

She was thrilled to have a chance to look the boat over and, more to the point, turned out to be as gracious a host to a traveler as could possibly be imagined. All the days I was in Halifax she was a fountain of advice on where to go, what to do, where to eat, and more. She also offered to take anyone I could gather along out on her friend's boat in a club race that Wednesday evening, two days away.

I knew Jamie, flying in that night, would be thrilled to actually get out on the water to view this beautiful landscape from a vantage point she wouldn't otherwise have, so I readily accepted for both of us.
The next morning I sent an e-mail to Michelle, beginning:

...you'll think me silly and absurd, I'm sure, but last night's sail with you and your friends and the evening as a whole was truly one of the highlights of this ten month voyage for me. It's all very natural that good human beings enjoy fellow good human beings but I still find it inspiring and uplifting whenever I experience it as I did last night.

Wouldn't you know, that was only the beginning.

The fleet was to spend Thursday and Friday moving the boats from Halifax to Syndey. It was billed as a race for the press but was actually just a delivery. No points would be awarded towards our round-the-world race. Knowing this, I left a message at my skipper's hotel room that I was jumping ship and that I'd met up with them in Sydney. When I saw him in Sydney, he'd thought I'd done the right thing.

This allowed me to spend those two days (the last Jamie had in Nova Scotia) driving across the country side with her. We also took along Vic, wife of the skipper of the Clipper boat Western Australia and the photojournalist who'd joined Uniquely Singapore for the Jamaica-New York run.

Among our adventures across Nova Scotia, we found a German ex-patriot who started a coffee roasting business in the middle of nowhere, and offered us free espressos to sample his beans (I had three espressos and bought four lbs. for our boat).
Friday morning we'd planned to kayak but the winds were too strong. Our kayak guide Angelo, however, invited us to hear him join two others musicians that evening for a performance at the Keltic Lodge in Ingonosh, an unbelievably spectacular coastal setting. After only a few minutes of conversation and a brief CD sampling of the artist he'd be joining, Jamie and I knew that whatever else we did that day, we were going to BE THERE that night.

Doing so involved quite a sacrifice on Jamie's part. As her flight left at 6:00 a.m. this morning and the performance began at 8:00 p.m. last night at a locale two hours from Sydney, we could only stay until 10:00 p.m. so she'd have two hours to drive me back to the boat in Sydney and still have enough time to drive all night to cover the four hours back to Halifax to turn in the rental car and make her 6:00 a.m. flight.

It was worth it. We got two hours of great music, personal dedications, and new friendships being formed.

I love this place.

Angelo, Jamie, Cyril, and Harold

Angelo even brought over his guitar during a break to let me indulge in a bit of playing. Jamie, a friend of six years, only learned at that moment that I played the guitar. It was only a few days before that we discovered both our degrees are in music.

These two key experiences made this stopover one of the most memorable I've had in this entire voyage. Add a few roadside bald eagles (look just off of Jamie's shoulder in the first photo) and you'd have to agree it's pretty hard to beat Nova Scotia.

Pics from Jamie

Here's a few more pics from Jamie's blog. She does this kind of stuff staying up late at night while I'm already sound asleep in bed.

If you can't tell, the white and brown dot in the tree is a bald eagle.

Off to kayak for the morning.

B&B'n in Halifax

Too busy to blog lately, so take a quick look at Jamie's too-busy-to-blog-lately entry she's put in over breakfast at our B&B.

Entering Halifax, Eh?

The fleet left the North Cove Marina in Manhattan as a group (above) to allow a helicopter photo opportunity in front of the Statue of Liberty. A morning fog grounded the helicopter, however, so we simply motored out into the ocean. We kept motoring as a fleet all night towards the north, waiting for enough wind to develop to allow a race. It did not appear until noon the next day.

The race proceeded heartily for two days with Uniquely Singapore in 1st place much of that time. It wasn't long, however, until the entire fleet entered a wind hole and our speeds dropped from 10 kts to .2 kts, if that. We could see nine of the ten boats around us all at all times, bobbing and swaying, all of us gaining then losing position against each other as the various currents and occasional small breeze moved us about like drifting toy boats on a pond.

After more than a full day of this, the race was terminated to allow us to motor to Halifax in time to make our scripted fleet entrance into their harbor yesterday, Sunday, June 8th, as part of a festival. In the time we spent drifting in the windless sea, we'd fallen from 1st to 8th.

The parade and entrance into Halifax, timed down to the minute much like our entrance into Singapore, required a pre-stop to allow the fleet to gather. It was perhaps 5:30 a.m. yesterday morning when all ten boats straggled one by one over twenty minutes time into a small marina a few miles south of Halifax. The local sailing club had free beers and a free BBQ waiting for all 150 or so hungry mouths (we were too tired, dirty, and hungry to care about consuming beer and burgers at 5:30 a.m). The yacht club seemed quite pleased to be given the opportunity to offer this hospitality.

Even in my sleep deprived daze (having gotten off watch at 2:00 a.m. and back out of my bunk at 5:00 a.m. to prepare to dock), I was aware of and enjoying their sense of human giving simply for the joy of it.

I've felt it many times on this voyage, for we seem to be treated like celebrities wherever we go. To counter that unfounded admiration, I like to point out to whomever is eagerly asking the questions I'm answering in whatever marina we find ourself that my inquisitor is probably ten times the sailor I was before I began this race, and is probably still so. Though I like to think of myself as perhaps our boat's ambidextrous wizard in our snake pit (see video below), this ability applies only to this one particular boat. On a more practical level useful for day to day sailing, I don't know bupkiss about anchoring, dealing the international procedures of fog, dead reckoning navigation, and other far more useful skills. Right now perhaps I'm perfectly primed to learn them, yes, but learn them still I must.

After a bit of boat clean up at this nameless south-of-Halifax marina (no time for a personal clean up), followed eventually by a true breakfast at 11:00 a.m., we slipped our lines again at 1:00 p.m. for our grand entrance into Halifax proper (below), overwhelmingly drowsy from our lack of sleep combined with our full stomachs.


The city had a full day of activities scripted for us but I sneaked away after the 5:00 p.m. clam chowder party and before the 6:30 brewery tour and 9:00 p.m. party in the local bar. I needed a shower, damnit, and enchanting hosts or not, I was going to take one.

I took two...just because I could. Then I took another one this morning. I'm contemplating taking another one right now and might take my third one today later this evening (the fifth in 24 hours) just before I leave to I pick up Jamie at the airport. You never realize what a luxury a true shower is until you spend almost a full year yearning for them.

Jamie was due to fly in at 10:51 p.m. last night but some storm in the midwest stranded her in Chicago (here's her brief story). On my own unexpectedly, I was content to simply watch a movie (in my hotel room, an indulgence I allowed myself only because Jamie was coming) and then drifted into that happy kind of sleep that only cotton sheets and a large bed that doesn't move can give you.

Even though I still woke up at 4:30 a.m. this morning as if I needed to go on watch, I did have the luxury of rolling back over and spreading my arms full length on either side of me and drifting back to sleep again with my cheek turned to sink into a cotton pillow case. I'll spend a bit of today doing laundry while I delight in the feel of jeans and a cotton t-shirt on my body for once. Ah...cotton!

Other than that, I'll probably achieve virtually nothing else today and be most content with that. I am so...so tired, and not just physically.

Jamie comes in tonight, 24 hours later than planned.

Below is the video mentioned above on the snakepit, my favorite position on the boat. It was produced by Vic, our visiting videophotographer on the Jamaica-New York race.

Corporate Cruising in New York

Nobody got hurt. Everybody kept all ten fingers and toes.

Out From Behind The Camera

We had a video photographer join our boat for the race from Jamaica to New York, giving me a break from the often laborious task of creating two short and concise videos each week as we race. Furthermore, I had the chance to be in front of the camera.

There are two videos below. The first is of me explaining what a Le Mans race start is (which the fleet used 24 hours after leaving Jamaica and motoring all night as a group to find enough wind). The second is of the becalmed conditions that ended this last race. In that one you'll get a brief glimpse of me in the background getting my mohawk haircut.

Hot Date Burning Down The Avenue

We arrived at the marina adjacent to Ground Zero in Manhattan at around 3:00 a.m. last night. One question that seemed to be on everyone's mind was who I might have waiting for me here.

Due to the various friends who've met me at ports of call around the world, whether they'd traveled 1000 miles or three blocks to do so, I've gained the predictable reputation of having a woman in every port. Someone even joked last night as we motored by the Statue of Liberty, "What if all those women showed up in one place, huh? I bet you'd be in a pickle then!"

Actually, not really. One, they're all just friends and, two, they all pretty much know each other. Jamie (Panama, Jamaica), Daphne (Rotterdam) and Claudia (Salvador) have all known each other for years, each of them being among the elite women hanggliding pilots of the world (which is how I met them). And Gay (Australia) knows Jamie, too. If they all got together, it wouldn't be anything new and they'd be having a great time together with or, possibly, most likely without me.

My hot date for New York, however, was my mom. I hadn't known she was coming, thinking that her trip to Santa Cruz took the place of her planned visit to New York. I only learned just this morning from my daughter that she'd actually still be here, leaving my 'woman in every port' reputation intact.

We had a great time this evening, strolling down the streets in the unexpectedly wonderful night air along Manhattan's waterfront, being decadent and having some ice cream before dinner, and enjoying a great dinner outside within view of all the Clipper fleet and their flapping flags and penants.

I'll be part of a skeletal crew tomorrow for a corporate sail, something that gives current or potential sponsors the ability to boast that they've sailed a bit at the expense of our peace of mind. My job will be to coach and guide them during various maneuvers and to intervene before they have the chance to treat a line capable of ripping their hand off as if it offered no more tension than a strong willed dog on a short leash.

We slip lines Wednesday morning for Nova Scotia.

Wing and Wing

...and, wouldn't you know, now that the race to New York was terminated due to a lack of winds, we've now got 30 kts pushing us along. We can only motor at 7-8 kts in the best of conditions so we've shut the engine down and resumed sailing, cruising along now at 10-12 kts under an widely eased out main and poled-out headsail. Ah...I see here in the Nav Station where I'm writing that we just hit 18 kts surfing down a wave. I felt it first and looked up at the guages to see that speed.

If we keep this up much longer, our ETA to New York will be moved up from Monday morning to Sunday night.

Sailing in this configuration is called 'wing and wing' or 'goose winged.' Picture a book open in front of you. Our mainsail is the right page and our headsail is the left page, held out in that unnatural manner by a spinnaker pole. It's great fun and, in this crisp spring air, drenched in bright but not hot sunlight, all of us are remarking that this is some of the most enjoyable sailing we've had the chance to do in quite a while.

With the main so far out, however, the potential for disaster is great. If a disoriented helmsman lets the wind get behind the main, it could possibly snap the preventer (a heavy line running from the bow to the end of the boom to stabilize the extended boom) and cause the boom to forcefully swing from fully right to fully left of the boat, possibly taking with it some vital rigging (such as our running backstays).

For that reason, we're cautious about letting any crew who just joined this leg take the helm. When I handed the helm over to a "legger" earlier today, he was allowed on only because the skipper came up to sit right beside him to coach him though his first session of sailing with this configuration, ready to leap in to grab the wheel before anything too severe could take place.