It has been a pretty amazing day and a half as we reach the Georges Banks. We had a very exciting start in where the crew, really for the very 1st time, went through some drills and got us in place to set up for the gun.
With lots of family up by the light house at the Inn at Castle Hill as well many on the water I certainly felt very well represented. I also really appreciated the on the water delivery of a ball of yarn for tying up the spinnakers by Ady and Blue -- thank you! Just a quick note on the start -- I was not quite sure how to call the line for Nordwind knowing I wanted to be VERY conservative and not be over early. It is tough to slow down and dial up a 70 ton yacht, so our timing would have to be perfect. Hans was great at getting us in a clear position of the other boats and as we approached the line, I asked myself, how the heck do I call numbers of boat-lengths to the start on a 88ft boat?? Three boat lengths at 8 kts of boat speed. Basically we were looking at 264 feet, closing VERY fast!! Not a simple operation with a bunch of guys I never sailed with. Andrew and was great though and we fell into a rhythm very quickly.
Then fog -- and lots of it. We came fairly close to a tanker who we had hailed on the radio, but he for some reason decided to not do what he said he was going to do. It is a very eerie and scary proposition to come across a tanker with about 50-75 ft of visibility. Certainly a bit of a jolt to us all.
Things cleared out for a beautiful sunset and I was able to catch some sleep. Saw 15 to 20 amazingly large dolphins kicking up phosphorous at our bow wave at 3am this morning during our 1st watch. As Andrew said it best, "Freakin Awesome!"
We have some fluky weather for the next 24 hours followed by a low pressure system coming across, so I expect some wet weather and some heavier sail change work. Will check back in shortly.
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