Liberty is being free from the things we don't like in order to be slaves of the things we do like.--Ernest Benn

Monday, June 7, 2010

Escape from New York

Leg # 11 of the Clipper Around the World Race is off and running 880 nautical miles from New York City to Sidney, Nova Scotia.

In the Virtual Regatta, the start was pretty ugly: The Many Players Race Committee issued no announcements, conducted no count-downs, sounded no audibles, or displayed any visuals. Skippers managed to start by word of mouth (forum) at an unknown interval after the start time (1300hrs PDT yesterday) announced in the Sailing Instructions.

Nevertheless, Vigilance, by being meticulously vigilant, managed a decent start! By late this morning, Vigilance found herself in 203rd position. That's her, represented by the long black hull (I think it's 10 miles long in scale). The clump of overlayed yachts under her include easily the first 500 boats in the race at this point. Nearest as I can remember, the yellowish boat behind Vigilance is in 1100th+ place. The light blue boat all by herself to starboard is in 700th+ place. And, yes, a Finnish boat flying a spinnaker has crashed into Nantucket. Parked there for most of the night, he's definitely in last (82,000th+) place now.

Boats are currently blowing by Massachusetts at 12.1 knots on a reach in 17.9 knots of wind under #2 Yankees. The wind has just now dropped and veered aft. I set a light air spinnaker.

I present this image because Vigilance will never look better than this. It's time to go to work and I have to leave everything up to Otto on the helm. If I lose 600 boats by the time I get back in the next six hours, the buck stops with Otto.


Leader board histories updated to Final (Click to expand):

5 comments:

  1. It turns out Autohelm did okay by me, getting Vigilance by 88 more competitors! Since the results were positive, I'll take credit as the human who set the controls. No great opportunities appear, so it's time to cover the usual hotshots and conserve and see what turns up when the weather changes at 2300 hrs.

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  2. U were down 2 kissing 100 b4 wind change kissed ur ass good-bye

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  3. Lost 250 boats while I was at work today; gained them back by gybing on to port, and then lost 100 when I had to gybe back on to starboard. Looking to be lifted with an off shore breeze for a close reach on port. I'll know with in the hour....

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  4. Who's going to dare to take Scatarie Island to starboard????? The strait appears to be less than 2 miles wide

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  5. Vigilant didn't make it. DNF. Imperfectly vigilant, she ran aground.

    I get the irony from the following post. Just want to put this ignoble race to be and move on.

    In the real world, I had to go to work,so I could afford to race on real water in the afternoon today. Which I did. Without running aground.

    Lessons learned? It isn't the stock market & I didn't back over my puppy.

    I'm moving on.......

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