Our buddy Joe Harris on Gryphon Solo (should be Gryphon Duo for this leg) is racing along, trying to hang on with Kip Stone and his Open 50 Artforms. They are a little over three hundred miles from Newport, averaging more than thirteen knots, and getting ready to hit the Gulf Stream. Life is good. Here’s his report:
I am writing from the mid-Atlantic with a 20 knot wind on the beam moving the boat at 14 knots, making it difficult to type so I will be brief. We started the second leg of the Bermuda 1-2 yesterday with sunny conditions and the wind dead astern for the start inside St. George’s Harbor. Gryphon Solo got an excellent start but all four boats in our class were tightly bunched carrying spinnakers as we exited the narrow cut from the harbor out into the Atlantic Ocean. Artforms was first to Kitchen Shoals followed by Gryphon Solo, then Swordflounder, and then Velocity. As we took a hard left to round the mark and head for Newport, our furling unit for our Code 5 spinnaker jammed, forcing us to sail dead downwind until we were able to clear it. We lost about ten minutes.
It then turned into a drag race as we put up our reacher and took off down the rhumb line headed for the Gulf Stream. We have been very close to Artforms but have left the rest of the fleet behind as these Open 50’s are very quick in reaching conditions. We have averaged speeds of about 13.3 knots over the first 20 hours of the race. We are only 50 miles from our waypoint to enter the Gulf Stream, which is 330 miles from the start. As the wind is forecast to go lighter after midnight, we are “trying to make hay while the sun shines” as farmers like to say.
So far the ride has been fast and wet, with waves crashing into the cockpit and soaking both me and my sailing partner, Brian Harris. Sleep has been a little tough but it is so much easier with two people! By tomorrow morning, we should be more than a hundred miles past the Gulf Stream. I feel confident that we will be able to manage the light and variable winds for the final 200 miles to the finish line in Newport.
I hope all our gear hangs together in these testing conditions and the drag race lasts a little longer.
Kip Stone, who’s racing with crack designer Merf Owen, also checked in with a report:
Merf and I have been swapping helmsman’s duties since we cleared the reef in Bermuda. I held on to the tiller while we eked our way inside the Kitchen Shoals marker to shave a few hundred yards off the course. With a 14’ draft and coral heads rising up to within 6’ of the surface, I figured it was my responsibility to be holding the tiller if something went horribly wrong.
The start was great – dead downwind across St. George’s Harbor and through the narrow Town Cut to open ocean. I distinguished myself by crossing the line dead last, but I’d borrowed heavily from the Paul Cronin playbook of smart starts and kept our code sail rolled up to maximize our maneuverability. Four or five quick gybes later, we popped out of the Cut in the lead and that’s where we’ve been ever since.
Now, after eight hours of fast sailing, Joe Harris on Gryphon Solo is only a mile or so behind – at 14 knots, that’s only a matter of a few minutes. In these fast reaching conditions, the boats appear to be very evenly matched and unless one of us suffers an unfortunate or unexpected gear failure, I expect we’ll be sailing side by side and in sight of one another for at least the next 24 hours. This is fast, fun ocean racing – very exciting and very challenging as we both push one another along.
As much as I enjoy the discipline of solo ocean sailing, I have to say that having a crewmate on board has been an extremely enjoyable experience so far. Shortly after we cleared the reef, I tumbled into the bunk (never been there before while racing!) and dropped off to the sounds of the boat being trimmed to speed by someone who really knows what they’re doing. Later, having reciprocated the favor, Merf appeared with a tray of sliced apple and cheese hors d’oeuvres – a huge leap forward in the culinary experience I’ve come to expect aboard this boat.
Bastards sound like they are having fun. You can follow the tracks of the whole fleet here, on the excellent IBoatTracker, which also handled the Annapolis-Newport race and is the best online race tracking system I have seen yet…
“Uhh, Merf, I know you want to say goodbye to those cruise ship girls you met in the disco last night, but our start gun went off two minutes ago…”
The Earthist Chronicles 