Hometown favorite Puma Ocean Racing’s Il Mostro during one of the Volvo Ocean Race in port races.
So…assuming my ambitious grand plan for the teak actually comes off and I have the deck reassembled by the first weekend in May, the first trip of the season is being planned. The glorious and exotic location? Boston Harbor.
This year there is another running of the Volvo Ocean Race. If you don’t follow sailboat racing, in a nutshell this is an around the world crewed race (as opposed to an around the world single handed race, like the Vendée Globe). It takes a while to do, and the race is done in a series of legs from port to port. In each port there are some buoy races – visual spectacles for the local fans which count towards the overall total score. Currently the fleet is somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, on the 12,000+ leg from Qingdao, China around Cape Horn and finishing in Rio de Janeiro after some 40 days of racing.
After Rio, the next stop is in Boston. The boats will be arriving some time in late April, with in port racing scheduled for May 9th. The fleet then departs for Galway, Ireland the following weekend.
The current plan is to being Evenstar up to the Boston area the first weekend in May and leave her…somewhere…safe. From her home at East Greenwich yacht club it’s around 110 nautical miles through the Cape Cod Canal to Boston Harbor. That could be done in a single day – around 15 hours of travel. But the Canal adds a dynamic in terms of when you want to hit it, and approaching any strange harbor for the first time after dark is inadvisable. We’re still trying to figure out exactly where to leave her that is reasonably economical, safe and convenient.
So the thought is to break it up into two days. The first day stop some place like Onset, Mass, right before the Canal. The Cape Cod Canal can have a ripping current either direction, an heading through it with 5 knots of current in your face is SLOW. So timing is critical. Fortunately the tides work out well for an AM departure from Onset after a leisurely breakfast, which should lead to a late afternoon arrival in the Boston area. We leave the boat and go home for the week…jobs & school are still factors!
The next weekend we drive to the boat and take her out on the harbor to watch the racing with our family and some friends. Depending on what we decide to do with bringing her home we will either leave Saturday afternoon for home and again stop over night, or we will spend the weekend in Boston and I will bring her home with a couple of friends the following weekend.
We’re pulling for Puma Ocean Racing, a home town favorite out of Newport. We watched their team train in Newport over the last summer and the boat was built just on the other side of the bay. Their training boat was an impressive high tech speedster, the real thing should be a sight to behold!
Here’s to hoping all goes well with an early commissioning…
