sy Timoneer

TUESDAY 21ST APRIL 2009
Noon position 28 degrees 04′.1 N 78 degrees 33′.9 W
Wind variable 10 to 30 knots!
Course 290 +/- Day’s run 185 miles

Yesterday afternoon we had thee Tropic Birds visit us and fly around the boat for a while. They had come at least 115 miles to visit us.

We sailed through most of the night, but the wind has gone very light and on the nose, so we are gently motor-sailing at the moment.

We went through a strong frontal system this morning, with boisterous winds and lots of lightning. We could see the lightning hitting sea all around us, but we escaped unscathed. The good thing was that we had very heavy rain as the wind fell away, so the boys did not have to do their wash-down this morning.

We are still steering more or less west and should cross the Gulf Stream this evening, close to Cape Canaveral. We are going to close the coast tonight, so we can miss the worst of the NW winds that are forecast tomorrow morning. It is blowing very hard to the north of us, so we are glad to be a little south of the worst of the weather.

We are still looking good to arrive on our announced schedule at 0630 on Thursday.

John

MONDAY 20TH APRIL 2009
Noon position 26 degrees 25′.2 N 75 degrees 17′.7 W
Day’s run 168′
Wind SE 10 to 15 knots
Course 280 degrees.

The wind has gone lighter and the sea has eased, so everybody has had a good sleep. We sailed for a while but we are motor-sailing again at the moment.

As the crow flies, we have 421 miles to go to the sea-buoy, which we need to reach at 0630 on Thursday morning. We will in fact sail a little further. We are going to pass close to the north of the Abacos – we are currently 95 miles NE of Great Abaco Island. We will go west along the north of the islands and cross the Gulf Steam. The wind is forecast to blow 20 to 25 knots from the north west, so our intention is to close the mainland shore inside of the Gulf Stream, and then head north. This way we hope to avoid the strongest of the winds and not have to beat directly into the wind when it freshens. We will see if the forecast is correct.

Now we are out of the tropics, it is quite chilly on deck. We seem to be getting to the edge of the Sargasso Sea – there is not much weed about today, so we are hoping for better luck with the fishing.

John

SUNDAY 19TH APRIL 2009
Noon position 21 degrees 36 N, 72 degrees 36 west
Days run 207′
Wind ENE 10 to 15 knots, with moderate swell

We are 413 miles east of Miami and have 584 miles to go. For our 6:30 arrival time at the river entrance we need average only about 7 knots now.
We had a bit of a wild night. The breeze built up to about 20 to 25 knots from the NE, but with a very confused sea. It was not comfortable and nobody was able to sleep much. Early this morning the wind eased and veered, but the sloppy sea made it hard to sail. The engine went on at about 3 am and we are motor-sailing gently. The sea is easing and it is not too bad now.

It is forecast to go even lighter this evening and tomorrow, but with stronger winds forecast for Wednesday.

We passed some very big banks of Sargasso weed this morning. There is enough of it about to make fishing hard, as we keep catching weed.

John Campbell

SATURDAY 18TH APRIL 2009
Noon position 23 degrees 19′ north, 69 degrees 43’W
Days run 231 miles
Wind ENE 15/18 knots

We are finally sailing. We are pretty much hard on the wind with a reefed main and full jib, making about 11 knots. It is a lot more comfortable than it was last night, motoring into a bit of a head sea. We will have to slow down a bit to keep on our arrival plan posted with the US Government, and to suit the tide up the river. We are about 140 miles north east of the Turks and Caicos Islands.

Last night, just before sunset, we caught a good-sized tuna. He was just too late to join us for dinner, but he came to lunch today instead.

Last night, for most of the night it was clear. Now that there is almost no moon, the tars were spectacular. This morning, just about dawn, we passed under a big bank of clouds and the wind veered. That appears to have been the anticipated cold front. Looks like the wand will veer some more, giving us even easier sailing conditions, before we get some more headwinds towards the end.

John Campbell

FRIDAY 17TH APRIL 2009
Position at noon today: 20 degrees 55 north, 66 degrees 34 W
Distance covered in past 24 hours 245 miles
Wind; Light South easterly with small swell.

We are still motoring in light following winds, with just the staysail set to reduce the rolling. We are ahead of schedule at this time, but there is a cold front to the north of us which will slow things down a bit soon.

The only fish we have caught so far are three Kamikaze flying fish. We did see three humpback whales this morning and have passed a couple of ships, otherwise we have the ocean to ourselves.

John

THURSDAY 16TH APRIL 2009

Timoneer left St Maarten this morning, at the 11 am bridge opening. We did the last of our pre-voyage safety drills, a man-overboard drill, in Simpson Bay. We are now on our way towards Thunderbolt, Savannah.

We have very light south easterly winds, so for the moment we are just motoring with no sail set. That may change as we get clear of the land.

For our arrival in the US we now have to give 96 hours notice, which is quite hard to do on a sailing yacht. We have declared our arrival at the sea-buoy off the entrance to the river to be 0630 on the 23rd of April. Let’s hope we can keep to that schedule. We have mainly light winds forecast, but a spell of stronger headwinds for the weekend.
John

FINAL RACE. DAY 3 OF ST BARTH’S BUCKET
SUNDAY 29TH MARCH 2009

Not so good today!

The course was about 25 miles, clockwise around the Island. Our rating was, as expected, not very good and although the course was similar to the first day out time was put back an additional 8 minutes.

We started a little late on a close reach to the first mark, a hard beat up to the next lot of rocks, tack onto port and continue around the island. All sounds easy but we did not do too well with our positioning and had boats all around us giving bad air and trouble. We had to pinch hard to lay the next rocks and passed really close – the adrenalin was flowing fast as we scraped past with waves crashing nearby. Boats were criss crossing each other and there were some close encounters as everyone pushed hard for advantage. Once around the Grenadier rocks we could free up a bit and hoist the mizzen staysail with a fleet of boats all around us, mostly in front unfortunately.

We all turned again to starboard around another off lying rock and set a spinnaker but the wind was dead aft so we had a lot of problems. In retrospect we should have stood on to get a better angle after the gybe but now we were committed. This course took us close into the shore on the lee side of the island and we fell into a hole while watching even more boats passing further offshore. Bad move.

We still have not heard the final results but we were well into the back half of the fleet, probably in the higher twenties out of a fleet of 35.

For final results and reports see www.bucketregattas.com

We will now go back to St Maarten and later this month up to Savannah to haul out and do our ABS survey.

All is well on board and we had a most enjoyable regatta.

Phil

RACE DAY #2 – SATURDAY 28TH MARCH 2009

Another perfect sailing day here in the Caribbean with 15 knots out of the East North East. The race committee tweaked our handicap a bit as this course was supposed to be more reaching which would favor us so we lost a few minutes to some of our rivals.

We maneuvered for the start just behind Maltese Falcon but misjudged the distance and crossed the line about 20 seconds early. Unfortunately we had a big Perini Navi starting at the same time and he was just down to leeward of us so no room to bear away and kill some time. The rules say that if you are over the line early you get a 5 minute penalty and you are not allowed to turn around and recross the line for safety reasons.

We were soon settled down on the course which was more or less a figure eight through the islands and rocks. They call is the Wiggly Course for good reason and we passed pretty close to the rocks and shore line with swells crashing against them and lots of white water. Good for the photographers!

Gradually we hauled in the boats ahead until we rounded the last mark, Isle Fourche, where we only had three boats ahead of us. We kept a wary eye behind us as the faster boats were closing rapidly but in the end we managed to hold them off and we passed the boats ahead to finish in first place – very exhilarating.

Unfortunately the 5 minute penalty allowed 6 boats to finish within that window so we scored a 7th position overall and 6th in our class. This puts us in 8th position overall after two races.

We are looking forward to the final race tomorrow but fear that our handicap may get hammered after our performance today. We will see.

Until tomorrow. PHil

TIMONEER AT THE ST BARTH’S BUCKET
FRIDAY MARCH 27TH 2009

The boats are all here and the weather is fantastic. There are 35 boats in this regatta with a waiting list to participate. The boats range from Maltese Falcon at 289 feet down to Wild Horses at 80 feet, big classic schooners (Adela) to modern ones like Meteor from Huisman’s yard in Holland. There are flat out speed machines (Leopard) and grand old ladies like the Perini Navis. Timoneer slots in somewhere in the middle and is the the Grande Dames class while the racing boats are in the Gazelle class.

The racing is in the pursuit format. We all start at different times and if the organisers have the numbers correct then in theory we should all finish at the same time. the first boat to finish then wins the race. The theory of course never works as there are so many variables but they are getting very good at handicapping these huge machines which are all so different.

We started the 27 mile course (counter clockwise around ST Barths) in about 14 knots of breeze, and our start was 28 minutes behind the first boat. We had a really good start and soon clawed our way past a lot of the boats ahead of us by staying high close to the island. We tacked to lay the eastern part of the Island and we were looking good and feeling smug. However we failed to make the corner and had to tack to clear the land which was a disaster and cost us a lot of time. Once we were back in the hunt again we then had a problem getting past the boats ahead of us who blanketed us with spinnakers and we only managed to get back a few places as we rounded Isle Fourche at the western end of the course. Lots of boats around, close to the rocks and some exciting moments for all. The photographers were probably having a field day.

It was a straight run from there back to the finish and we were doing Ok until the huge Maltese Falcon rolled over the top of us and stole our breeze. At the time we looked certain to overtake two other boats before the finish but this was not to be when we lost our speed.

We ended up finishing 11th overall and 8th in our class.

Tomorrow is another day!!

Friday, 12th December – Race 4
Timoneer wins the Antigua Super Yacht Cup!

The course for the final race was the same as on the first day, but the wind was a little lighter; about 15 to 18 knots. The handicaps were tweaked a little and this resulted in us starting last, twenty six minutes behind the first starter, Signe and two minutes behind Kalikobass.

A close fetch out to the first buoy five miles south of the island saw us arrive neck and neck with Kalikobas. We gybed at the mark for the broad reach down to Curtain Bluff. Our foredeck crew did a fantastic job getting not only the spinnaker set, but also the mizzen staysail up and drawing several minutes before Kalikobass was able to get her spinnaker pulling. This allowed us to sail through their lee into third place at the bottom mark.

Luckily for us, the breeze picked up to around 20 knots, and we soon caught and passed Tenacious on the beat. Although we closed on Signe, we could not catch her and she crossed the line a few minutes ahead of us.

However, our second place was enough to give us the overall win for the regatta, so we were all happy with that and enjoyed a great prize giving party held at the Copper and Lumber Hotel here in Nelson’s Dockyard.