Final score

We got 2nd place on the final score! Congratulations to Patience who made it in 4hrs (!) before us, catching the rest of the breeze that finally died in the early morning hours. I think we did really well given that we had some bad luck on the first afternoon running in those wind holes. Video from the race is coming up, stay tuned for updates!

Finished!

This morning at 7:24. Hair rising finish with virtually no wind and max flood current setting sideways. Boat behind us got tangled at the mark even! No clue yet what the placement is!

Made it through!

Wow this time we were really lucky and got through Plum Gut with the last of the incoming tide! The guys behind us must have juust missed it :-)) Anyways now it's heading home, 50mls to go.. Strategic consideration: stay at the LI shore or head straight home?

Rounded Block Island!

After shaking off that darn fog wind picked up nicely and we rounded the southern point around 2pm. Some casualties due to high seas after BI..

Morning report

Passed Plum Gut at midnight. Wind started dying and now we're totally becalmed sitting in dense fog on anchor somewhere in the block island sound. At 4a another sailboat appeared ahead and drifted by us to the back (they weren't anchored :-))

Sunset

Wow we ran into another one of those wind holes and got passed by the whole fleet :-( working our way closer to LI shore now to avoid losing that shore breeze again.

Caught the shore breeze

After some painful minutes caught in the doldrums between the north easterly breeze watching the guys in the middle of the sound pass. But now we're flying under spinnaker at 8+ kn! Guys in the middle are way behind now, ha. Skipper's comments: being back in the game woohoo!

And started!

Almost over early but made it right in time.

Before the start

40min to go!

Dockside

Last installations and provisioning!

First signal @ 1400 hrs

Forecast is kind of light with 5-10kn from the south. Will be tricky to pick the right passage into the Block Island Sound tonight. Plum Gut or The Race? The tide turns about 1hr later at the Race..

Block Island Race 2011

is coming up! Gringo is on the start with most of the usual crew.
http://www.stormtrysail.org/Pages/2011-BI-Race/2011-BI-Race.html
Start date is Friday May 27th. Lets see if we can repeat last year's 2nd place or do even better this time!