![]() While in the shed, I also had a local outfit install a gloss grey vinyl wrap. Burnished to 400, she feels pretty smooth. Using quality SeaHawk paints courtesy of my great sponsors at West Marine, I’m happy with how the bottom came out. Not the most Gucci solution on earth, but the price was right. The triple-spreader 75-foot deck-stepped mast looks to be in good shape, and won’t receive a ton of work.įor the bottom, doing a proper race bottom would have been complicated and expensive with Sparrow’s size and so I saved a ton of money by just doing all the prep work myself and rolling on sponsored bottom paint. Major thanks to those guys for doing what they could to help me out and then getting Hayn to come on board as a new sponsor and kick in some turnbuckles and other parts. With help from riggers Jay Maloney and Mike, we managed to re-do all the rod on the boat, which was a big goal of mine. I don’t have a ton of time, or money, but I wanted to knock out what work I could and then get over to the start in Spain for another 5-6 weeks of prep. As for my campaign on the Open 50 Sparrow, after successfully knocking out my 2,000-mile qualifier we went straight into the shed at Maine Yacht Center. So hopefully we will actually have 20 boats on the line. One of those unofficial entrants is American Cole Brauer who is a last-minute addition, but I’m really hoping she makes the start. The rate of attrition in the battle to the starting line has been high we’re now down to about 20 boats in the fleet with a few more likely to drop off, but there’s a couple more boats that haven’t actually officially registered but should be on the starting line. Class 40s, Open 50s and an otherwise diverse mix of quicker boats trying to run down an S&S 34 to see who will be the first man (or woman) home. ![]() Solo, non-stop and around the world, it’s effectively a poor man’s Vendée Globe. It’s now less than three months until the biggest start (and my start) of the Global Solo Challenge race out of Spain. Corrected to First in division 1, my personal first Mac win in 24 tries, and a good weekend indeed for this group of local sailors! The straits presented their own challenges, and the bridge-to-the-island race involved lots of people doing math in their heads on handicap and “could this still happen” kinda thoughts, mostly in secret.Įnd result is that the friends-and-family Usual Suspects proved the older 52’s can still hang- at least offshore - and the extra 10% effort 100% of the time was enough to pay the bill. ![]() Our sole professional (Chad Hough, Quantum Sails) worked double time for the same pay and found us a pretty clean path through the weather systems we encountered, and we avoided most of the holes. This earlier generation 52’s have less drag, a bit narrower, and go well in light air. Nobody was talking, but all of us were thinking it. Heartbreaker was out front most of the race, but by the time we reached the manitou passage, there was a quiet thought circulating: Usual Suspects – with some luck or maybe some hard work – had a shot. In the 52’s, no consensus could be found amongst navigator approaches and we saw FOX and NJ going outside the manitous, for some incremental gains, paying for some miles but with a “worth it, barely” outcome. ![]() ![]() Sincere congrats to anyone who did well in their class this year– there was a fair amount of light air jungle-ball sailing and it wasn’t generally a year to move far away from the center of the lake, though in my class Natalie J made it look pretty smart to sail an extra 20 miles or so! An interesting report from the Chicago-Mackinac race… ![]()
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