Now we take a big jump out in the virtual ocean….oops! Now I’m in Miami, Florida. It is two hours left to start for the second leg in SYCC, Sailonline Yacht Club Championship.
The course is 1300 Nm from Miami to Kingstown.The boats we are sailing in this race is VO 70.If we take a look at the weather forecasts in looks to be much light head winds. It may be a bit tricky to navigate through the Caribbean islands with these winds. Many sleepless nights I think.
Jepsom, the winner of the first leg is of corse one of the favorites also in this race. And watch out for Wiz.
I will report each day directly from the boat during the race. Now it is time for us to leave the harbour.
14 sept – 06:00 UTC More than 300 boats has started, so far. Is that a record? We have had a nice sailing the first hours of the race. Good winds round 5 m/s and the fleet is still close together. We have the island Andros just to north. For some minutes ago the latest weather forecast arrived. Light easterly winds and a temperature of 30° C. In the top of the fleet we hav the brittish boat Ogwah and the favorite Jepsom. They both has sailed a lower but faster course and Tango sailed a little bit higher. Tango is in 138th place.
15 sept – 04:30 UTC The wind turns back and forth, and it is not easy to find the right way. But I think we have god position in the fleet. Tango is in 146th place on the leaderboard but that doesn’t matter at the moment. On our winward side, to the north we have the american boat Hulse4 which chose to go north of Andros. Looks good for him just now. On our leeward side we can see Farmor and Clash. Numer one at the leaderbard is the swedish m22_9_Jokern.
16 sept – 04:30 UTC One part of the fleet has turned south, on the outside of the big island Haiti. Intresting! Looks that they will have more wind out there, but head wind. Janhal (Nävekvarn, Sweden) and Mistli (my mother) is the leading part of that group. The brittish HYC_TREV is the leading boat of one group north of Haiti, and Jaguarfarmen (Sweden) leads another group a little bit more north from Haiti. In this north group Tango sails, and Farmor. Jepsom, Wiz and SWE54 is in the HYC_TREV group. The wind is now turning now against and decreasing.
17 sept – 04:20 UTC This is tricky. Yesterday Tango was number one for a minute, now we are at number 33. The wind direction changes the hole time. And the south pack have much better winds than us here in north.
18 sept 04:30 UTC The south pack looks more and more good, Sniff is in the lead just ahead of Raven. Yesterday was a bad 24-hour for Tango. Some bad decisions and some bad weather updates and Tango is still outside top 50. But there is still 454 Nm to go.
19 sept 05:25 UTC 170 NM left and now it happens things. The wind is decreasing and turns against. SWE54 and Lattjolajban has chosen a more westerly coures to meet the new wind. Maybe it is right, maybe not? The German boat Brainaid is in the lead, in front of swedish bwha. My old father, Farmor, is in 11th and Tango is in 15th. Jepsom is back in 125th, but have still good wind. Mistli is in 82th. In 20 hours we know who is the winner in ths race.
20 sept 05:50 UTC The race is over. The first boats crossed the finish line round midnight. First boat to arrive at Kingstown was the german Brainaid. 33 minutes behind the german was the swedish Lattjolajbanladan. Tango took the 8th place in a hard battle with many boats. Tango had only 13 minutes to 5th place. The 5th placed brasilian boat Grilo is now the overall leader in the championship. Farmor ended the race in a good 10th place and is now in 10th overall. Mistli is just now in 69th place just outside Kingstown. The winner of the first leg Jepsom had a bad race and is at the moment in 88th place. Now it is time for some more sleep. Next race in the championship is a short race in smaller boats 27 sept. Grilo has the ”pole” but I think there is lots of sailors who will win the championship. Link to Sailonline >>