Morning aboard
I had my coffee aboard Zanshin in the morning before Antigua Sailing Week Day 4. A nearby horn went off outside and I thought to myself that 06:15 was awfully early for a big yacht to be departing but thought nothing more of it. Until another two blasts aroused my curiosity and I went topsides. Adagio of Lorne, an older Hallberg-Rassy, was drifting with wind and bearing down on poor Zanshin.
I jumped into the dinghy to fend off the attacker, but she hit with a crunch before I could push her away. She pranged once more before I got her separated. The mooring line was hanging limp and was debating towing her, as she was drifting right for the reef. Fortunately two fellow sailors came by, from Emily Morgan and Games Maker 2 (whom I’d met in St. Lucia).
We maneuvered the errant boat to a nearby mooring and I returned to Zanshin. There was a chunk taken out of the teak rub-rail but I didn’t go look for more damage. I needed to head ashore for Antigua Sailing Week Day 4 and wasn’t in the mood for more problems. On my way ashore I attached a note to the back of Adagio informing her owner what had happened.
Morning ashore
On the committee catamaran the crew informed me that the technicians had not been aboard to fix the toilets or the whining alternator belt. Both heads now leaked terribly and after each flush the whole head needed to be showered down. Not a pretty picture at all so I won’t be posting one. But I was disappointed and contacted the charter company again, this time adding a carbon-copy to race management. That seemed to work, as they replied; but we needed to leave the dock at 08:30 today.
But we had to go out to our station at Rendezvous and departed before anyone showed up to make repairs. The winds and seas had picked up and it was pretty choppy outside of the bay. After the foredeck crew got us hooked up in record time, the boat remained sideways to the wind. This had happened before in the past years as the morning current pushed eastwards. But this had always stopped by the time the first starts were scheduled for 10:00. Not today, although it wasn’t enough to hinder our starts. It certainly made for an uncomfortable time aboard with some strong rocking. I tried to use the engines to straighten us out, but the combination of wind and current made that quite difficult.
10:00
Our starts proceeded apace with most of the classes behaving quite well. CSA 2 remain extremely competitive but didn’t quite warrant a black flag. We did have a lot of jostling for position and shouting while coming down the line, but we didn’t hear or observe any collisions.
Noon
We’d now turned into the wind, so conditions aboard were more amenable. The second set of races were delayed due to some equipment failures (which means that Fungus, alone on the mark boat, had wrapped the line with his prop). We had to get an alternate anchor from Hawkeye and this took quite some time. There was a bit of grumbling from the racers, as they’d had a delay the previous race as well while waiting for the photographer to arrive.
Despite several protests and some contact at a mark, all the boats managed to return to base more or less intact. Antigua Sailing Week Day 4 is progressing without a major incident so far.
Afternoon and Evening
Just as in the previous days, we were back first and had to maneuver into our slot at the docks. It was really hot in the cockpit, but we found that sitting forward on the trampoline was much cooler and also offered us a view of the action ashore. The owner of the errant boat came by and we agreed that I’d look at my boat for any damage. They were also racing, so were just as busy and preoccupied as I was.
After the drinks and prizegiving we listened to the 17 61 Band for a while. They were great, but once the rumbling from our stomachs got louder than the music we decided to give Indian Summer another go. This visit was just as pleasurable as the first. None of us were up to the long night that Reggae in the Park promised.
