Update from Grey Goose in the Transatlantic Maxi Yacht Cup
by Mike Broughton, Navigator 23 Nov 2011 23:57 PST
24 November 2011
I thought you might appreciate a quick update from the crew of Grey Goose (Swan 82), taking part in the Maxi Transatlantic Race.
We are now on day three and have been pushing the boat hard and are very happy with our position to the north of our competitors. After the start, we had a short ten mile beat around the northern side of Tenerife and ten escaped the Canaries to the north – which is a pretty unusual strategy for this time of year and we have largely been racing in downwind conditions for the last 600 miles.
We have had some fantastic ‘champagne trade wind sailing’ – spinnakers, sunshine and shorts…just not the bubbly stuff.
It hasn’t all been a doddle though. We have long nights here and have had to deal with winds to force 7 and some lumpy seas that have seen us surfing to speeds over 20 knots at times, though mostly we have been averaging about 13 knots. That may not sound fast, but on a 44 ton yacht, it is. The loads are on the rigging and spinnaker sheets are huge and we have seen our fair share of breakages. Fortunately we have been able to keep the boat going over ten knots at all times, though it has taken some resourceful crew work to keep the show on the road and keep the ‘pedal to the metal’.
Our biggest problem so far was the heavy duty A7 spinnaker ripping in half. That is a job for tomorrow and could take 7-8 hours. Our specialist sail trimmer, Ed Hill (also a sail maker) did a great job today repairing our new A4. The attachment point for the halyard was virtually worn through and luckily we noticed it in the middle of mini drama when one of the control lines broke.
The A4 is our heavy weight downwind running ‘kite’ and the reinforced headboard is rather like 3cm thick cardboard, that you can hardly bend. We had to make up some new attachment loops and then in order to sew them to the headboard, ‘Bear’ had to hammer about 50 holes with a sail makers spike to ream the holes, before Ed could stitch it a massive needle and needing pliers and the good old ‘sail makers palm’ to get the needle through. The repair took five hours, so we were all happy to get our trusty kite back into the air and Grey Goose back up to speed again.
We are now ‘close reaching’ without spinnaker, as we have carefully positioned ourselves to head between a tropical low pressure system to the north of us and a large area of light winds to the south that will see some boats slow right down. We can expect the wind to veer from strong southerly winds to much cooler northerly winds on Thursday afternoon. We can even expect our first strong tropical rain.
So where are we coming in the race. Well the tracker system doesn’t seem to be very impressive and sometimes doesn’t update our position, but I would say that we leading on corrected time so far. In fact before the start, we never thought we would be any where near this advanced on our larger rivals at this stage.
Our friends and close rival, ‘Emma’ has sadly had to retire, we understand they had an almighty ‘broach’ in the windy conditions and were laid flat for a while, damaging and losing some equipment and the owner Johann getting injured, tearing some ligaments. We are sorry to lose them from the race and we are ever mindful in keeping safe. It won’t be any easy return for Emma beating back into the north east winds.
Everyone onboard is getting on really well and supporting each other. Right now starboard watch is on deck, with the owner Tobias on the helm, Andy Hudson making coffees in the galley, with Ed and Bear trimming. Port watch are meant to be asleep, unfortunately Christian is struggling to sleep; hopefully he will drift off now we are on a steadier course this evening.
As I type we now have 2057 miles to go. Hopefully after the rain associated with the cold front tomorrow that we will encounter tomorrow, we will soon be clear and we will be back to some more ‘champagne sailing’ by Friday morning?
Kind regards
Mike and the crew of Grey Goose