The Dangerous and Barba Roja crews
Off on a heavy beat
Ducking Barba Roja
Gov cup 2024! A wild ride if there ever was one.
After a bit of a rocky start getting to the line, with a soft grounding and a broken fuel connector on our motor, we made it and started the race under conditions in the high teens. We settled on playing the eastern shore as much as possible, and worked to get over that way early in the race. Conditions briefly dropped enough for us to shake out a reef and put the Genoa up, before building again. We did a couple driver rotations, and as evening fell the waves and sea state built again with storms in the vicinity.
At its peak around and for the first hour after sunset, conditions built into the high 20s, gusting into the low 30s. Even with just the reefed main up, we struggled to keep the boat on her feet and on course as we pounded hard into heavy sea state.
After about an hour of what felt like getting our teeth kicked in, the breeze backed off somewhat and we were able to re-hoist the jib and sail a close reach to Point No Point. As we hardened up to head to Point Lookout, we discovered the jib had a tear across the entire top of the sail. Without a spare, and with it still trimming and making power, I convinced Dewey to leave it up for the remainder of the race. Once we rounded Point Lookout we were able to crack off and enjoy more reasonable conditions for the remainder of the race.
In the St. Mary’s, the breeze clocked aft and we were able to set a spinnaker in the last mile of the race, making for a great photo finish.
4th of 7 boats so not our best performance ever, but the crew were all troopers and I felt like we got almost everything out of the boat we could’ve given the challenging conditions. Definitely a gov cup for the books, but maybe not one I’d like to repeat very soon!