Hi Folks,
Here's an update on Tiara (scraped from my facebook page):
We made it... after five days of sailing 645 nm from Marion MA to Bermuda against 13 boats in our class and 50 boats in total. We also sailed against the blue god: the Gulf Stream (as one book calls it).
We had some hair-raising moments like the roller furling line parting twice at night under heavy winds, and the discovery two days into the trip that our water tanks were empty, and one crew member falling head first into a bronze porthole (he's ok but will have a cool scar and story to go with it).
We had some seriously talented racers on the crew including Jeffrey Benagh, Brian Duncan, and Captain John Ring. These guys really knew how to get the boat flying... it seemed like most of the time we were moving at close to hull speed.
A favorite moment was when I woke up for my 4am watch and found out that Jeff and Brian had been up for hours trying to get the boat to move in little to no wind. Jeff's hands were raw from working with the sails and he wanted a brief break so he could find some gloves. He never gives up. Or maybe it was hearing another crew member Trinh singing a happy song as the boat flew through the water under sunny skies. Or maybe it was the captains egg sandwiches.
My job was being the navigator but the twist was that we entered the race as a celestial boat, I had to read the heavens using a sextant and figure out where we were. It was stressful at first because I wasn't sure that all of my book learning about celestial would translate into the real world of ocean racing but it did and after nearly 600 miles of celestial navigation we turned the gps on and we were about 1.5 nm off course.
We ended the race second in our class, second in celestial, and second overall... how cool is that?
marionbermuda2017.jpg
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
