Charlie V - Bermuda Race 2004

Inspections are over, all supplies are on board, locations charted and marked.  Watch lists are posted as well as emergency procedures including routines of harnesses, jack-lines and 3-way tethers, required on Charlie V.  This trip we are not only eating Heater Meals (similar to U.S. Government issue,  you can get a hot meal without cooking)  but we are also going to be drinking filtered tank water, keep the center of weight low in the boat.
 
A spinnaker start in sunny weather.  It is a drag race until sunset when we are once more “alone” at sea.  The watch captains and navigator have worked out an early game plan (1) west of the rhumb line to enter the gulf stream at a slightly southern meander (2) head east and work our way west to east between the two major eddies south of the Gulf stream (thank you Jennifer).  (3) Question how far east to go over the top of the clockwise second eddy? -  do we cut it short and head due south to Bermuda or will we get swept back west if we cut it too soon?  We’ll see.
 
Second night we blow out the .86AP chute in 30+ winds, the boom during a reef action locks under the port lifelines ripping out stanchions and bending the stern rail as well as parting the upper lifeline.  We rig new lifelines with extra spinnaker sheets and use only the heavy chute for the remainder of the race.
 
Sunday night we are through the stream, our sea temperature gauge is working perfectly. We now play the eddy game and have caught sight of the “red” J-44 just ahead of us, we are probably in 2^nd place at this time but the fleet is hot on our heels.  Do we turn south or hold it for a while.  We hold East for a few more hours before turning south (I wish we in hindsight had held East for at least 2 or 3 more hours).  We are now heading south and notice the fleet drifting westward.  The wind lightens and we are caught in an adverse current pulling us west.  The perimeter of the clockwise eddy is wider than we planned (or guessed).  The boats to the west must not be doing well.
 
Monday night or early Tuesday we are below 10 volts and are unable to start the engine for our 12 hour charging routine.  The inverter was left on thereby bypassing the battery switch.  No juice.  We get off a message to Gold Digger who tried to help, no good.  Over the next few hours all the electronics failed and we were left with flashlight to strap onto the bow and stern and to light up the gimbaled pedestal compass.  Two battery-powered hand-held GPS’s were crosschecked with our admiralty chart of the Bermuda approaches.  The GPS read in decimals and the charts read in minutes and hours.  Not difficult but we thought we were going backwards until we figured it out.  From then on each 20 minutes chart plots were made after extrapolations.  We thought we had really bagged it.

Approaching Bermuda our code zero was invaluable.  Approaching the finish line we wired together 8 AA batteries to the hand held VHF to signal our finish, with much difficulty, as we did not have enough lights to light up the sail numbers.  After crossing the finish Larry Glenn came up to congratulate us, and then it began to dawn on us that we perhaps didn’t do too badly.  We felt we beat Larry over the line by several seconds but he and the committee felt there was a seven second difference, but we had him on corrected time.  Can you believe seven seconds after 700 miles of racing?
 
We were towed in through the reef at night by a very knowledgeable and capable Swan 44 skipper who brought us right to the yacht club piers where their able launch operators tug boated us right into our slip.

Second place.  Could you believe it.

Thanks to the whole J-44 fleet who made for this exciting race.  As for the “red” J-44, congratulations on a great race. We are coming back in 2006, no electronic failures anticipated.

Norman Schulman
Skipper J-44
Charlie V