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High Noon is in Newport getting ready for the start of the Bermuda race this Friday.

Hello from High Noon. We’re testing out our satellite phone connection to make sure we can blog during the race.

Jay.

Friday June 18, 11:30

Final preparations are being made here at the dock. The divers are under the boat doing one final cleaning, and just about everything is loaded on the boat. The crew are rigging lines and the “Before” picture of everyone lined up on the boat has been taken. This is the time where anticipation begins to build before we finally drop the dock lines and head out to the starting area. The weather is beautiful at the moment and the forecast looks pretty nice, though the sailing will be all upwind, hopefully with some reaching to make it a fast passage. Time will tell.

Friday 6/18 13:45

We’ve arrived at the starting area and are just cruising around with all the other race boats and spectator boats. We start at 1500 so we’ve got some time to kill. The crew is relaxing and enjoying the view of some truly spectacular vessels including perfectly restored classic trawlers, to a mammoth ketch completely decked out with stainless steel hardware and enough brightwork to keep a team of workers varnishing full time.

The weather is bright sunshine with a nice sea breeze, looks like it’ll be a nice start to the race.

As our start time approaches, we head towards the starting line, getting there a bit early. Colin does a fine job luffing the boat into the wind to waste about 30 secs, and we bear away for speed and hit the line right at the gun for a very nice start.

We’re off to Bermuda!

39,59.06N 070 16.03W

Saturday 6/19 0400

We’ve had great sailing all afternoon and through Friday night. We’re still on starboard tack, close reaching with the Code 0 headsail. We’ve been making 8-9 knots all night, under perfectly clear skies. As the half moon set, the Milky Way took it’s place, providing enough star light to see and trim the sails almost completely without flashlights.

Given the calm seas and cooperative wind, we’ve had it easy so far, just really nice sailing. But you never get away scott free on the open ocean. In the words of the great sailing skipper Captain Ron, “If it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen out here”; it has indeed happened. Our first challenge of this race occured when we hoisted the Code 0 and the halyard broke. This particular halyard has a lock at the top, so what would ordinarily be a fairly simple situation becase a bit more complex. The broken halyard came down, out of the mast, to the deck, while the sail stay up – it had locked into place as it was designed to do.

So we’re now sailing with a Code 0 locked to the top of the mast and no way to take it down. With over 600 miles still to go to Bermuda, this was a problem we had to fix.

As the sun set, Kit was sent up the mast to see what he could do to alleviate our situation. After a half-hour, he had lashed the sail to the mast, so we put the bow down to take the pressure off the sail, and he was able to remove it from the lock fitting. Kit came back to the deck, and we’ve sailed through the night with the Code 0 lashed to the top of the mast. This is a major improvement as we know we can send someone back up the mast to cut it down if needed (the lock is a metal fitting we couldn’t have cut). Kit will be going back up in the morning to re-rig the halyard and put the sail back on it to complete the fix. The good news is the Code 0 has been the right sail to have up all night so this hasn’t cost us anything on the race. So far so good.

Friday June 18, 11:30

Final preparations are being made here at the dock. The divers are under the boat doing one final cleaning, and just about everything is loaded on the boat. The crew are rigging lines and the “Before” picture of everyone lined up on the boat has been taken. This is the time where anticipation begins to build before we finally drop the dock lines and head out to the starting area. The weather is beautiful at the moment and the forecast looks pretty nice, though the sailing will be all upwind, hopefully with some reaching to make it a fast passage. Time will tell.

After dawn broke we continued sailing along down the track in light to moderate breeze. The Code 0 we’d been stuck with all night had been the right sail so there hadn’t been any damage done to our racing but now it was time to change to the light #1 and we needed to deal with our Code 0 being tied off at the top off the mast. We sent Kit back up the mast where he tied off and put his halyard on the Code 0. We hoisted the #1 jib and prepared to take down the Code 0. Jay shinnied out to the end of the bow sprit and spike away the tack of the Code 0 while Billy and Dave dropped down the companionway. With the Code 0 finally on deck, the new jib drawing nicely, we sent the halyard back up for Kit, who had a smooth ride back down to the deck. We’d survived the whole incident without a scratch, thanks to good seamanship and a bit of luck with very cooperative weather.

Breakfast saw the first round of freeze dried food delivered on deck: some dee-licious scrambled eggs with bacon bits. The Starbucks instant coffee came around and all in all it was quite edible.

The weather continued to cooperate as we hit the shifts to continue our path down to our target entry point on the North wall of the Gulf Stream. With the wind still light and the seas calm, we sent Kit up one last time to re-run the locking halyard. Mousing a new halyard down the inside of the mast can be a hit or miss affair, but in this case, luck was again on our side and the new halyard was run the first try. Someone must have done a good job making the proper offering to King Neptune as he and the weather gods have been smiling on us since we left Newport.

A lot has happened since our last blog. It’s been a very busy on board and there hasn’t been time to blog as often as I’d prefer.

We’d managed to find good shifts up until this point, but the wind steadied up and we found ourselves sailing to the East without a good shift to come back West where we needed to be before the South Westerly wind we expected filled in and trapped us downwind of our entry into the Gulf Stream. We had to bite the bullet and sail back wihtout a positive shift, which cost us some distance we’d hoped to avoid. In the end, this turned out to be the right move as the wind filled in as expected and we hit that shift perfectly, tacking onto the course directly to the Gulf Stream. Sitting on the rail, we saw a pod of four small whales trailing us for a bit before the stopped and started milling around, breaching now and again, probably finding something good to eat. We’all that that was a good sign, but little did we know.

After patting ourselves on the back for the good tactical call that put us in the proper position to enter the Stream, we decided to make a sail change as the wind was building nicely. The medium #1 genoa was brought in deck and made ready to hoist. As we got ready to start the sail change, the light #1 that was being replace exploded off the head stay, and began flailing around, threatening to break in half. We bore the boat off to take pressure off of it and managed to get in on board in good shape, with only one tear. The headstay prefeeder had blown off the head stay, allowing the fully loaded sail to burst out of the track all the way up the headstay.

Now we were sailing without a headsail, and searching for a way to fix the prefeeder so we could hoist the medium #1. It took a while, but we found the spare part, mounted it and got the new sail up drawing. This bit of misfortune cost us some good distance we should have made towards our destination. Maybe whales aren’t so lucky after all.

We sailed all night towards the Gulf Stream, getting into it as planned in the early Sunday morning hours. The seas immediatly built as the wind continued to blow. A couple of sail changes later and we’re bumping and bashing our way in 2-3 knots of fair current, heading towards our exit point where we’d leave the fair current and head directly for Bermuda.

Sunday was a bit challenging as the “Bash to the Onion Patch” showed us how this race had earned it’s nickname. We were making a good 10 or so knots over the bottom, but the going was tough in the jumble of large, squared and otherwise mis-shapen waves. Sort of like driving through nothing but potholes while going 55 miles an hours. There was tons of water flying over the bow as High Noon drove up, around, over, and through the waves. Then came the sqalls. The fresh water wash was welcome, but the driving rain and big breeze made sailing a challenge. We went through 5-7 squall lines before finally coming out into some blue sky and smoother water as we exited out the bottom of the Gulf Stream and turned the bow directly for Bermuda Sunday evening.

The evening was full of fine sailing, and a round of freeze dried dinners, which hit the spot after a long day of bashing through the Stream, unable to do any cooking or other food prep.

We’re now making a good 9 knots heading directly towards the Onion Patch. Bermuda is a mere 220NM away, and we’re hoping for fair winds and a sunny day tomorrow.

Monday morning dawned partly cloudy with a nice sunrise bringing warmth to the people on deck admiring it. We’re still sailing directly towards Bermuda making 9-10 knots over the bottom. As the light improved we spotted a sail up high on the horizon, heading down across our track. It took a few hours but we finally crossed paths with White Rhino, who continued sailing lower as we sailed higher up towards Bermuda. This put us ahead of her and we celebrated with a couple of granola bars and some beef jerky. Eventually, White Rhino came up onto our heading and is currently shadowing us but not getting any closer. After some 530nm of sailing, we’re sailing boat-for-boat with the competition – something that motivates both of us to keep pushing hard for the finish line.

What should be our final day of the race was a beautiful day of sailing. Everyone got a little time to clean up and the wind was light enough that we could open the hatches for the first time since the start of the race to air out High Noon. It doesn’t take long before the interior of a closed boat turns into a hot, steamy, locker room smelling mess that makes everyone spend as much time as possible on deck. The fresh air made a world of difference to the off watch trying to get some sleep down below.

The sun set as we continue our strategy to sail the shortest distance to the finish. So far, this appears to be working out as a large boat appeared above us on the race course. The boat had their Code 0 flying, which told us they were trying to get downwind to the finish. As we’d hoped, they were having trouble getting down to the rhumb line and were going slow enough that we could just about keep up with them, even though they were much larger. Hopefully that will be enough of an advantage that we’ll beat any of our competition that took a similar route.

We expect to finish early Tuesday morning, though you never can tell what’s going to happen before you get there. The weather report is looking good for light but steady wind that should enable us to get there as planned.

Soon, we’ll find out just how all our efforts have panned out when the results are posted in the coming days. Whatever happens, it’s been a good adventure.