the horizon, hard to distinguish from the lights on shore. Brown Eyed
Girl in particular seemed to be working ahead of us, closer in to LI
Shore. Yet the forecast was for better breeze in the center of the
Sound where we were. I really didn't understand why they appeared to
be moving on us.
Around 1AM (now Skip's watch) the wind, which had been pretty stable,
started changing. For the first time since the start we changed sails.
From the light spinnaker we went to the heavy kite, then just five
minutes later, to the asymmetric medium-weight kite (our "J-Lo").
The wind built and moved from behind, to our port quarter, then to our port
beam. We were approaching the exit of LI Sound making for the Race.
But with the wind strengthening so much and going forward it made our ability
to continue on intended course questionable at best.
This was the predicted "front" coming through and I should have
anticipated it better. Well, we were being driven "down", couldn't
hold course for the race, were barely clearing Plum Island to
starboard and were about to be driven out the Sluiceway instead of the
Race. OK, let's change sails again, to the jib top which allowed us to go
better to weather. Suddenly the wind built more, to 23 knots and I
shouted below, "WE NEED HANDS TO GET THIS KITE DOWN NOW!"
I saw Franz jump out of his rack, I directed him to go forward in the
boat to collect the chute down the sewer. Three of us pulled the kite
down onto the foredeck and fed it to Franz. We got the kite down
quickly and in one piece. ("Thanks, Franz, I was thinking to myself",
but he was back in his rack by the time I looked below again.) With
the jib top up we made very nice speed along our intended track, out
the race, with a very fair current, and towards the Buzzards Bay Tower.
Around 2AM I decided that the situation was stable and I would grab
some sleep.
we were moving with good pace toward the tower, wind was roughly on the
beam and it was breezy. The deck watch had changed back to the A-sym
kite, our “J-Lo”.
There was a bit of light in the eastern sky and as it got lighter the
running lights on the horizon slowly revealed hulls, then sails of
other boats. We thought we had been sailing fast, but close to
windward of us was a J-120 (Alibi) and not far behind was a C&C 110,
both from the division slower than ours. Trouble? Not enough
information to evaluate. But as we closed on the tower, perhaps two
miles away, we saw the distinctive hulls of J-44's leaving toward
Block, both our rivals. They were 20 and 15 minutes ahead of us,.
not what we wanted.
We hoisted the jib top again, doused the kite, rounded the tower at 6:58
AM and headed toward Block Island on a tight reach, about 60 degrees
off the wind. Other than heading down in gusts and reaching up in
puffs there wasn't a lot of strategy to this 27-mile leg. We thought
we narrowed the gap a bit with the boats ahead of us but we weren't
sure. The nearest competitor behind us was at least 10 minutes back.
I grabbed another nap on this leg, about two hours. I would need it.
The next part of the race would be strategically the toughest.
When I woke we were just five miles from Block Island, still on tight
reach. I checked the weather on the radio, no change in the general
forecast. Unfortunately Hurricane Katrina disabled the "dial-a-buoy"
system (the national processing center is on the outskirts of New
Orleans). We only had slow internet access on the boat so I taught
myself a new trick: getting weather forecasts from my Cell Phone. It
worked pretty well, I got current conditions and forecasts for a bunch
of towns on both sides of the sound. I continued doing this for the
rest of the race.