Blog 2 - We are racing!
Star Chaser was looking like a busy beehive this morning, with her race crew getting the last things in order to get off the dock and go racing!
We had a good start going off with our nr 3 headsail and 1 reef in the main....it was still a bit windy and lumpy although not quite so much so as during our training this weekend!
The first couple of hours had us tacking up the south coast of Antigua, before going round the east side, heading for the first and only laid mark of the race, just off Barbuda (all the other marks of the race are islands! How cool is that?). Lots of reefs in and out and back again as it was a bit squally and we are racing, so we do want to keep as much sail up as we can.
Right now, we're headed for the south point of Nevis, under the nr 2 ( a bigger headsail) and a full main.
We have just had dinner. Night has fallen and everybody is getting settled, used to the boat and the watch system (4 hours on watch, followed by 4 hours off watch). You can feel the excitement running like a fever through the boat, we are out here, in this first of all RORC Caribbean 600 races and doing well!
We are middle of the fleet (just under 30 boats), with yachts like Leopard and DSK-Swan 90 (boats almost twice our size) ahead of us, but we are lying first in class! Need to get back to the deck as racing means constant concentration and as Sir Chay Blyth always used to say, ‘there are 3 things important to win a race: trim, trim, trim!'
More tomorrow....
