Susan Hood Trophy Race

 
June 6, 2010 posted by admin

Sunday June 6

What an amazing ride! The Susan Hood started at 2000 (8pm Friday evening) and finished at 1130 (11:30am Saturday morning) ! The winds were fantastic and almost screamed us all the way around the race course.

After starting at PCYC the fleet headed south west to the Burlington Weather Mark. As we got closer to Burlington the wind lightened up. The code 0 was up and worked well. One mile from the mark we couldn’t see the lights. For anyone who has gone around the Burlington weather mark you know it’s difficult to see when back lit by the street lights, but usually when you get to within a mile of it you can pick it out in the dark. Then certainly within half a mile it looms at you like a big oil rig or spidery looking thing. Friday night the weather mark had no lights on at all. We drifted up to it in the dark blind. All of a sudden we were right beside it. Thank goodness the GPS is very accurate! Then, as we came around the breeze followed us and we were able to leg out on everyone who was stuck at the mark.

The breeze backed, the asymmetrical kite went up and we were off like a rocket ship! On the way to Niagara R2 we saw 15.3 knots of boat speed! Credit where credit is due, Nick my double handed partner had the best sustained speeds, but I hit the top speed!

The rest of the race was fantastic. It was a great test of the gear for the Bermuda Ocean Race and pushing the boat around in the dark for the first time. We’re really ready!

I’ll keep you all posted on Monday’s drive to Annapolis.
Diane

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