Day 4 - Leg 1 Finish - 2012 Atlantic Cup
May 15, 2012
Hello friends-
When we last left off we were hootin and hollerin doing 18 knots in the gulf steam on Sunday. That day we reeled off easily 270 miles for an average of over 11 knots in 24 hours. We finally had to pry ourselves away from the conveyor belt to head northwest to NYC, but it was not easy. Monday was a good day with moderate southwesterly's making for smooth downwind sailing, although not near as fast. As we approached NY, we received a position report that we were in 2nd place, only 1.8 miles back from Campagne de France). However, the next report 3 hours later said Mare was in the lead, followed by Bodacious Dream and CdF with GS2 in 4th, so it was not clear to me what happened. Anyway we just focused on going fast and entered NY harbor at sunset and navigated through the 12 miles from Amrose light to the finish line off the Statue of Liberty. While it was good to not have drama, we missed the type of mano-a-mano gybing duel that Mare and CdF had up the Hudson River. We finished around 3:00 am outside North Cove Marina and were followed in by good friend and renowned marine photographer Billy Black, whose dedication to shorthanded sailing is legendary. Billy was there at 3:00 am as he always is, to welcome us in and get some great shots. Thank you, Billy. So, in retrospect and summary, we are relatively pleased with our 4th place showing in a very competitive fleet with a lot of good boats and skippers.
We wish we had started more aggressively and will try to do so in leg 2...; to get out of the blocks quicker. The boat looked only ok upwind and not so good in the super light stuff, but she is like a great skier on a Utah powder day carving turns and planing off at high speed going downwind with a big kite up. Really quite cool and addicting.
Next up - Saturday departure for leg 2 from NYC to Newport, which is home base for gs2. We hope to kick some serious French butt. And will be totally going for it in the 265 mile sprint up Long Island's South shore, past Block Island and into Narragansett Bay.
Stay tuned and thanks for all the wonderful emails of support and urging to sail faster!! We appreciate it!
Cheers
Joe
QUICK LINKS:
Atlantic Cup Race Site >
Real Time Race Tracker >
Photos of Joe & GryphonSolo2 diuring Pre-Race Preparations >
