You've probably read about Doug Abbott and his crew on Flyer's first Newport to Bermuda Race in SpinSheet, but you haven't heard yet about the race against a hurricane home... Here it is in Doug's words:
On the delivery home, Hurricane Arthur turned what we thought would be a pleasure cruise into another race. The CCA Safety and Sea Seminar that we attended in March in Newport emphasized the difficulties that crews experienced in previous return trips, so we made sure to have aboard a well seasoned ocean crew.
When we left Bermuda on Sunday, the storm hadn't developed, and there was little to no concern of a major Hurricane moving up the East Coast in early July. On the Tuesday a.m. weather check, we were about 250 miles into our trip saw what was in store for us. Based on our boat speed and the predicted speed of the storm, we believed we could beat the storm to the Bay with plenty of time to spare.
Along the way, two of the Naval Academy boats (Swift and Defiance) were between five and 15 miles ahead of us. Swift called us twice daily w/ weather prediction updates, which complemented the reports we were getting via the sat phone. It was reassuring to know the US Navy was leading us home. Many thanks to skipper and crew of Swift.
On Thursday afternoon when we entered the Bay, the center of the storm was just south of Hatteras. We had a 25-knot southerly pushing us along at hull speed, then at about 4 a.m. on Friday when we were just north of Cove Point, the wind shifted to northeast and gradually built to 35+ kts. We pounded through it and pulled into Oxford at around 9 a.m.
The crazy thing is that after more than 1800 miles of travel, most being in the ocean (St. Michaels to Newport, Newport to Bermuda, Bermuda to Oxford), the roughest weather we experienced on the entire trip was between James Island and Oxford. Just goes to show you that just because you make it from the ocean to the Bay doesn’t necessarily mean you’re in for an easier ride.
~Doug Abbott
