Wind SW 12.8kts Seas 1-2ft
Mahina Kai - Day 2 Marion to Bermuda – Over the
edge
While the first half-day of the race is
characterized by the
activity of the start, the second day is about leaving the
continental shelf
behind, and arriving at the gulf steam current.
As the race moves along, the pack spreads out. During night watch, we leave
one nearby boat
behind, and a USNA sailboat which has been shadowing our course
within sight,
changes heading to pass behind us, turns off AIS, and within an
hour is gone
from sight. Nothing else
in sight now,
and it may stay that way until the final hours of the arrival in
Bermuda.
There is a boat race in the Western US, from
Port Townsend
WA to Ketchikan AK, which ran a couple of weeks ago. It apparently is open to
vessels of all
sorts, and I saw kayakers, catamarans with oars, human-powered
craft, and many
others on TV coverage. The
race distance
is similar to MBR, but it is a near-shore race, with support
services along the
way and ports that a boater can pull into in case of trouble. Being a near-shore race, it
seems to me that
you never are forced to say farewell, to cut the apron strings,
and head into
the abyss. One of the
racers said: “To
reach Ketchikan you have to build your own little victory, every
hour of every
day.”
Those are true words no matter what the
challenge. In offshore
racing, once you are in the big
blue ocean, you need to be your own problem solver and build those
little
victories. There are two
“on your own”
moments in this race. The
first is when,
late in day 2, the depth gauge flips from around 200-300 feet over
the
continental shelf, to “no reading”.
When
I write that in the log, I always think of a final scene from the
“Titanic”
movie, and it’s a long way down! The
second
is when, at the end of day 2, the boat enters the gulf stream. When the prevailing winds and
the prevailing
seas meet the gulf stream current it creates a cacophony of sea
state. Pilot-friends talk
about the Yaw, Pitch, and
Roll of an aircraft, and you get all of those in the gulf stream
seas as these
weather forces meet.
Dinner of Tortellini soup with Shepard’s pie,
and the Cookie
of the day: “fair winds” Clouds
#SVMahinaKai #MBR2017
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