ALIR 04

I need to go find the CDs with the pics on them--hence the red Xs.

My opportunity to participate in this race came about through one of my sailing communities, the Trailer Sailor Bulletin Board. One of the denizens of the board, SkipperEd, posted that he was looking for crew. I replied, and I guess he had missed my account of my first offshore race or something--hey, at least I was able to say I had offshore racing experience (and that essential element: vacation time). So as things turned out, Ed and the first mate, Fred, knew each other (indeed, they're related by marriage), and none of the other three of us had ever met each other or either of them. And it worked out just fine.

Here are Fred and Ed

And here are the other crew members, Rich and Ken.

Step A was getting the boat to the starting line, a distance of about 95 nautical miles, including one stretch with strong current. That meant a pretty early departure on both days so we'd have a favorable tide there (and also meant motorsailing and motoring, kind of a strange concept to those of us whose outboards have been languishing unrepaired in our storage sheds for over a year).

Our stop for the first night, Mamaroneck, NY. This was the first time I had ever sailed from one state to another (the boat is out of Westbrook, Connecticut), so that was kind of exciting. It was raining when we got in, and we all trooped over to a local diner in our foulies. They looked at us like we were from Mars. Since we were in the North, though, they did at least have a place to hang them up.

The next morning it was on to the East River. We motored the whole way, due to the current. At the time this picture was taken, we were doing 11.6 knots over the ground with probably about 6 knots of boat speed. The river was covered with little swirlies.

It was a misty morning, but it was fun to see the sights of New York from the water.

Pretty soon after we got down into the actual ocean, I managed to bump the keel on the bottom. She would just kind of go thud in the troughs. There was some quick perusal of charts and deeper water was located over closer to the shore.

By about noon, we reached our destination for the day, a mooring at Sheepshead Bay Yacht Club. Ken and I took advantage of public transportation to see some of the sights of Manhattan, mostly the South Street Seaport Museum. We rejoined the rest of the crew for dinner at a nice Italian place across the street from the yacht club.