meredithcbi
| Vessel Name: | Cape Breton Island Clipper |
| Vessel Make/Model: | 68 ft Clipper |
17 July 2010 | Hull, England
The Fat Lady Sang
4th position..... That's where we finished race 14, the final race! With the winds getting lighter and lighter, we were quickly losing boat speed, and before I finished my night watch.... Australia had over taken us, and Qingdao was breathing down our neck!
16 July 2010 | off the coast of England
Blog 22 - Almost There!
I know this is my second post for today... But I forgot to mention the advantage we had over Jamaica since this morning! We watched them blow out their spinny right in front of us!! It was spectacular sight! Sad for them.... Helpful to us!
16 July 2010 | Holland
Blog 21 - Pulling Away
After our disastrous start to this race, and fight upwind through the wind farms last evening, we managed to gain some mileage back on our competitors! On my night shift, we flew our heavy weight spinnaker in what even I(known as Spinnaker Woman at home) would call 'testy' conditions!
15 July 2010 | Holland
Blog 20 - Windmills, Clogs, and Race Start
Well here we are in IJumuiden, Holland (about 40 minutes outside Amsterdam). This was a short stopover, and really only scheduled as a muster point for the fleet after Cork, and before we head to the grand finale in Hull. Our race into Ijmuiden was much faster than anticipated. Therefore the crews had [...]
13 July 2010 | Ireland
Blog 18 - WELL over due blog
ok... so keeping up with the blogs is NOT as eay as I thought it would be. I have one on the boat which I need to email and then post. it belongs here... im trying to stay on top of them to keep you all as well informed as possible. you would think when on shore it would be easy, but without a laptop [...]
Blog 7- Homeward Bound
The race start was set to be a La Mans start at 16:00 local time, and approx. 40nm outside New York, after the Traffic Separation Schemes(TSS). As we steamed out, the wind speeds increased, 26 knots gusting into the 30's. We put in a reef (reducing the area of our main sail) and hanked on the Yankee 3 headsail (our smallest headsail), and lined up identically rigged with the other 10 yachts. As the count down was transmitted over VHF, our crew with assigned jobs scattered off and hoisted the Yankee and staysail. Holding course of 100 degrees for the required 10 mins, winds lightened slightly, we quickly made a plan to shake out the reef and hank on the Yankee 2 (our medium sized headsail, anxiously waiting to pull away from the fleet!
This was quite a spectacle! Very exciting time, the anticipation was building and the pressure was shared by all onboard! (And I'm sure some at home as well!) With no other yachts to win the race into their homeport in the 90-10 race, there was that little extra want and desire for Team Cape Breton to be the first!
The fleet held the ground and it was close match racing series. Working hard by 00:00 we stand 1nm behind Spirit of Australia (our main rival), and tied mileage with Team Finland, Jamaica Lightening Bolt, Hull &Humber, and Uniquely Singapore. A bonus is we can see and hunt down our prey in front of us while defending out miles from those behind! We just need to increase those miles!
