Dear Friend of CHARIAD:
Please joint other Friends of CHARIAD at the Tavern on the Common in Central Square (730 Massachusetts Ave), Cambridge, this Friday starting at 6 PM.
We are not quite out of winter but the days are getting longer and our thoughts are turning to what passes for spring in Boston. We will start thinking of warmer weather and the fun times on the water.
The restaurant/bar is on the Mass Ave block on the Harvard Square side of Prospect Street – the center of Central Square. There are several good and not expensive parking options on Green Street and Bishop Allen Drive to the east of Prospect Street. Harvard Square is towards the west.
Come Friday night and bring a friend. If you know of someone who might enjoy teaming up with the CHARIAD gang on the water or off, please invite them.
CHARIAD Repair Update
I am very encouraged that CHARIAD will be repaired and back on the water in racing form. The folks from Hall Spars who made the mast inspected the broken sections of the mast 10 days ago and have decided that the mast can be repaired. That reduces the total repair costs by about $10,000. I am hopeful that this will bring the total costs for getting all of the repairs done into a range that the Boat US insurance will accept as a normal loss claim. I should know this for certain in the next week.
Video of Halifax Race
Gary Jobson produced a video on his racing the 2011 Halifax Race. Here is the link to the video.
This is a very professional video showing what it was like being on a 60 foot boat as it broke the record for the race to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Jobson is narrating the video in a studio in a very laid back tempo. You don’t get the feeling of little sleep, cold, wonder at the open ocean, living on peanut butter, trying to find the lowest place on the boat to sleep, the laughing and story telling, working to keep working at a racers edge pace from Sunday afternoon to Wednesday night straight. That is offshore racing.
When we did the race on CHARIAD, we were a lot colder on the water, particularly at night, off Nova Scotia than comes across in this video. There is also a lot less room on CHARIAD down below than on a 60 footer so we were sleeping on the sails. I am attaching a couple of pictures. Notice Herb Loeffler’s mustache and the Canadian Mounty. We did not have enough fuel to motor back and there was not much wind when we left Halifax. When we got about half way back and the wind was up enough to seem like we would eventually get back, we broke out the rum – see the toast. A beautiful evening picture was taken by another boat and given to us after the race.
The boats in the video sprinted to the finish. For the last ten miles of CHARIAD’s race we had a C&C 40 trying to pass us under spinnaker with the wind coming off the shore. We luffed them time after time right up onto the beach all along the Nova Scotia coast trying to keep them from passing. A ten mile luffing match. As we started to cross the mouth of Halifax Harbor to the finish line, the C&C was able to get by us just before the finish. I believe our handicap ratings were the same so that meant they beat us.
After the race, the skipper of the C&C came over and gave us a bottle of wine as a consolation and congratulation for a great competition. The race committee then inspected both boats and tossed the C&C out of the finishes because they did not have the required safety equipment on board. CHARIAD passed and took their place in the finish. I believe we finished 5th – great for a distance race. CHARIAD was also part of the BYC team and we won the club team award.
Just thinking about the race gets me excited about getting back on the water.
Hope to see you Friday evening.
Rick
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