Bermuda Race Recap
As predicted, the race featured very light winds. We never saw more than 15 knots, except in a couple of brief squalls within sight of the finish line. Before the ’94 Bermuda race that I did on Capella VII, which was also predicted to be a light one, our navigator was being interviewed by a member of the press. When asked whether he expected a slow passage he said, “We expect to be absolutely slow, but relatively fast”. In 1994 we were just that, winning our class. Unfortunately, Gold Digger was absolutely and relatively slow and we placed 9th of 11 J44s. Good thing the party was good at the other end.
Daily Synopsis:
Friday June 16th.
The start area was packed with 263 boats starting the race and probably another 100 spectator boats packed into about 2 or 3 square miles. A huge crowd of Gold Digger fans watched from Coastal Queen.
Our start was at 1320. If the gods have allotted you only so many perfect starts in your sailing career, it’s not worth wasting one of them here, but we did. We nailed a
pin-end, port tack start. It was beautiful . . . and just about meaningless on a 635 mile race.
Our strategy, debated all morning and finally determined within minutes of the start, was to head east of the rhumb line to a southeasterly flowing meander in the
Gulf Stream. This was the longer of the two options, but we hoped our easterly positioning would set us up for an easier ride into Bermuda after we cross the high pressure ridge into predicted SSE winds.
We put Newport over the hazy horizon by about 1630. Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket were visible until about 1930. We had a nice 10-12 knot SSW, which we thought was a seabreeze and which we expected, based on the forecast, to die after sunset. However, the breeze maintained its strength and direction pretty much until early Sunday morning.
Friday night was clear and beautiful. It’s amazing how many stars you can see once you get offshore. The Milky Way was bright enough in the sky that one guy mistook it for encroaching cloud cover. I saw two big shooting stars -- the kind that leave a bright dust trail in their wake. The phosphorescence was brilliant, trailing out of the wake, streaming down the side of the boat and lighting up the little white caps all around the boat. These are my favorite things about sailing offshore at night. As an added bonus, it didn’t get nearly as cold on the first night out as on previous races.
Sunsets with nothing but ocean as horizon are pretty cool too.
Saturday June 17th.
We made it into the Gulf Stream at about 1000, having made good about 150 miles toward Bermuda in 21 hours. For the next 12 hours we averaged about 10 knots over the ground while being pushed along by a 3-4 currrent. Remarkably the wind remained steady, the seas relatively flat – for being in the Gulf Stream – and the weather warm, sunny and beautiful.
The only negative to report was that we discovered that the connection between our satellite phone and computer was not functioning. Brian and Tom spent hours trying to fix it to no avail. That meant that we could not get position reports on other boats or access the web for updated weather. As it turns out, this really handicapped us later in the race. Brian still got to enjoy some helm time.
Sunday June 18th.
Sunday morning the wind really dropped out. We’d been expecting it for two days but after so many hours of steady wind you start to hope that maybe the forecasters got the whole thing wrong and you’ll carry a steady breeze all the way to the island. No such luck. It got very light and patchy, so that at times the boat speed dropped to under a knot. Since we were still in the stream, we were still making some, slow progress to Bermuda.
During the morning on Sunday, we were in close contact with Maxine, a J44 class competitor. When my watch came up, she was probably a mile and half ahead. Over the course of about two hours we managed to grind their lead down to 150 yards. “Wahoo, we’re going to sail right past them!” . . . and then we sailed into a hole and they found a little breeze and in about 20 minutes they killed the whole morning’s work and then some. Not good for morale . . .
On Sunday afternoon, we made the move that I think may have cost us any chance at winning the race among the 44s. We had originally planned to do just as we wound up doing, which was to punch out of the main axis of the stream into an eddy closer to the rhumb line and on a more direct route to the island. However, when we actually made the decision, the wind direction was such that we had to go nearly due west for several hours to get into position on the eddy. During this time our competition was headed SE down the main axis of the stream, putting us behind. I think if we’d been able to see the other boats on iTracker or if we’d been able to maintain contact with Maxine in the morning, we’d have waited for some evidence that we weren’t alone in making this jag to the west. Who knows?
The link to our track is here. You can compare that to others
here.
For all of Sunday we made only 100 miles good toward the island.
Monday June 19th:
The winds began to come back later on Monday. We appeared to have crossed the high pressure ridge and we expected the winds to back to the S and SE. Never happened, though on Monday we were still hopeful. So we were positioned almost due N of the island with the winds coming from S and SSW.
It was on Monday morning that I popped my head up at about 0445, before my watch came on, just as we were passing a
navigational buoy – 250 miles from nowhere in about 5,000 feet of water. It had obviously broken free from somewhere and was adrift. It sure was weird to see it out there though.
I finally saw a couple of dolphins surface, but only once, on Monday afternoon. The other watch had seen dolphins a couple of times but even though I leapt out of my bunk a couple of times to go see them, they were always gone by the time I made it up.
Tuesday June 20th.
Tuesday morning was beautiful at dawn with some high clouds in the eastern sky, but very little wind. It was pretty, but frustrating when you’re objective is to get there fast.
There was no sign that the wind was going to back and, at that point, no real reason to believe that it would. The last 250 miles turned out to be a beat. The wind remained fairly consistent, though light, 8-10 knots.
On Tuesday morning we saw a large school of tuna chasing baitfish about 150 yards from the boat. One tuna about 3 feet in length leapt clear out of the water after his prey . . . a really cool site. A few hours later we spotted a large pod – maybe 20 or 30 -- of smallish dolphins playing in the waves. A group of about six of them broke off from the main pod and started chasing us down. They didn’t stay long. I spotted one swimming in the bow wake for a few seconds and off he went.
I got a really good shot of three of them surfacing at high speed about 100 yards from the boat. The shot is full size, so you may have scan around until you find the dolphins.
The only other wildlife we saw on the trip were a few flying fish and lots of man-o-war jellyfish. No whales, sharks or sunfish.
On Tuesday afternoon, the boat’s speedo (knotmeter) went down. Since it is integrated with all of the other fancy electronics on the boat, we could no longer tell by the instruments true wind speed or direction, or current, or distance to laylines, or a bunch of other things that are helpful to know. I’m sure this didn’t cost us the race but it sure didn’t help.
Wednesday June 21st.
The convergence of boats toward the island after being spread out across a broad swath of ocean produces a parade of navigation lights all around and was amazing given how relatively alone we were for most of the last 4 days. There were rarely more than half a dozen boats in sight until Tuesday PM. Now they are hard to count.
Distances in the dark are very hard to judge and sometimes it takes a while to figure out which direction a boat that is fairly close to you is even sailing in. With so many boats, the lights of the island and various navigational aids nearby it can be difficult at times to figure out what you seeing. I’m a bit colorblind so red, green, white lights all look pretty much the same to me at night making it even more challenging. We crossed tacks with one boat fairly closely. She was on starboard and therefore had right-of-way, but we crossed her by 2-3 boat lengths. Not close at all during the day, but nerve racking at night, especially since this guy felt the need to shine his flashlight in our eyes as we approached the cross – jerk.
The first sign of the approach is always the Gibbs Hill Lighthouse sweeping its arc across the sky. As dawn approaches around 0330 (all times EDT, and we’re now significantly east so that local time is really 0430 AM) we can see land. As you approach the finish it is standard practice to inform the race committee that you have passed Mills Breakers Buoy and are approaching the finish line. The nearer you get to that line without hearing your competitors calls, the higher you hopes get for a good finish. Unfortunately for us we begin to hear other 44s calling their approach and finishing – Mabuhay, Glory, Sagitta, Stampede. It became obvious that we were well out of the money.
There were a few dark clouds ahead and they appeared to contain rain but it’s not clear whether they had any wind under them. As we got to within 10 miles or so of the finish, the rain began to pour down in buckets and the wind went from 10 to 25 knots in about a minute. We had an all hands on deck to try to change the sail (which is designed for winds up to 14 knots), but by the time we were ready to affect the change, we were through the cloud and back into light wind. Everyone who was on deck was completely soaked. No big deal as the race was almost over.
We sailed through a second squall a short time later. This time we did a quick bare-headed sail change. Dropping the light sail (LM1) to the deck and raising a heavier one (H1) quickly thereafter. This squall was less intense than the last, produced less rain and wind and also created a beautiful rainbow arched over the eastern end of the island.
A few minutes later at 0458.11 AM EDT we crossed the finish line. We finished 3 hours and 24 minutes after the first 44 and about 14 minutes behind the finisher directly in front of us, in 9th place out of 11. The last two boats in the class were another 3-4 hours off the pace.
The sails came down, the engine is fired up and the prop is engaged for the first time in 5 days and we started the 2 hour journey around the island into Hamilton Harbor. Race over … PARTY ON!
