Wednesday and Thursday June 10 & 11, 2015

Overnight race Brindisi to Corfu

Photo: The Brindisi-Corfu Race fleet, photo from the 30th anniversary year book.

The Lat/Lon I've used for this post was recorded at 0410 11 June. We had given up again on the spinnaker - not enough wind - only 1.7 knots and wrong angle. We put up the jib & main and were sailing to weather. The race has been great with interesting challenges.

At the skipper's meeting before the start, the course was changed eliminating the mark off Otranto. This was done in expectation of very light wind along the Albanian coast and the waters north of Corfu. Like NO Wind!! As they said, we would sail up to a "parking garage" of boats trying to get into Greece! When this kind of situation occurs, the little boats sometimes catch the big ones and a whole new race begins.

The start at 1300 was basically to weather but some boats did it with their spinnakers up. The first class to start were the maxi boats in Class A. Then Classes B & C - everyone else. 116 boats registered for the race. The B & C classes were large but the starting line was also long. We wanted to keep clear of others because if they were yelling at us, it would likely be in some other language than English. Just after the start there is a mark on the starboard side that has to be honored so it got a bit tight but no problem. We are in the Double Handed category.

We were flying--speeds over 7 knots. Wind was about 15 knots from the north.

We also wanted to take our time with sail changes since we are doing this double handed. Plus we didn't want to look like fools. After we got beyond another starboard mark at 1415, we set our asymmetrical spinnaker that is flown without a spinnaker pole. We had a great run with the spinnaker until 2200 when we had too much wind - 25 knots. Paul had just gone below for a few moments of shut-eye. He told me that if the boat to windward of us got too close to come off 4 degrees. I did that almost right away and noticed that this boat was having a good bit of trouble handling their spinnaker. Ours was giving me a little trouble & I came off more and then it was the end of Paul's snooze. We needed to get rid of the spinnaker. It apparently was about this time that our neighboring boat broached. We did a great job getting our spinnaker down--no snafus. We rolled out the jib and were doing 7.1 knots.

Within an hour, the wind had dropped to 8-9 knots and our speed was 4.9 knots. We put the spinnaker back up - the beginning of untold number of spinnaker settings and sail adjustments. I gave up keeping track. Some of the time the wind was so light we dropped the main to help the spinnaker. At times we barely had steerage. The sea was sloppy and not helping at all sailing in light air.

As we got closer to the Albanian coast we could make out the lights of Vlore and Sarandes. Then the orange moon - a crescent - came up over the mountains. Later it provided a descent amount of light. Black spinnakers and these new modern, dark grey or black magic fiber mains and jibs are sure hard to see at night.

From this point to the last 3 miles, the race was a test of one's patience, ingenuity in setting sails and luck finding wind. The race has a time limit of 32 hours from the start. If you don't finish in that amount of time you are given a DNF--did not finish--result. I really didn't want a DNF but at times I thought we would never have enough wind.

During the last three miles we finally got consistent wind even though it was only about 6-8 knots from the north--astern. We were flying the spinnaker again and put it "wing and wing" with the main. That helped a lot because of the shape of our spinnaker and because the sock was sticking at the top not allowing the very top of the spinnaker to fill.

We crossed the finish line at 1631 Greek time (time change of 1 hour). We won't know the results until they are announced at tomorrow's party. Duration 26.5 hours. Distance about 110 miles.

We are at Gouvia Marina in Corfu. After showers and dinner ashore we went to bed--very tired. Paul didn't get more that 20 minutes of consecutive "sleep" and I got a little over an hour.