We broke our circumnavigation record by 10 mins! finishing in 3hrs 37 mins and 4 secs. It was an extremely rough sail around today, especially along the south shore, where there were big swells and a punchy 18-22kts. The breeze direction was SSE, so it meant the ever awkward beam reach for the majority of this tough leg. We left our safety boat in the dust, as we skipped over the waves, charging West. The 49er was like a bronco, frequently jumping in the air with the flying fish, with just the rudder in the water. The sensation of trapping hard and getting air is really cool and we got 15 miles of practice doing that! We had a great sail going until the approach to Whale Bay, where we had a dramatic pitchpole and flipped the boat - time at this point was 2 hrs 18 mins. The pitchpole was hard to avoid, as the waves were shoaling up as they approached the shoreline. The wipeout left us with a broken main halyard and a missing tiller extension. From there we limped into the finish in the Great Sound, with a jury rig to get her across the line. We were on track to go sub-3hrs around the island! We now know the right wind direction (or the opposite, a NNW'ly) to do it right! Just makes for a hairy sail! Its goes down as Jesse and I's most extreme sail in any boat!
Big thanks to Gareth for lending his 49er for the mission, to CELLONE and Lindos for sponsoring this event and for our safety boat drivers: Paul Doughty, Tom Evans, Malcolm Kirkland, Raymond Lambert, and Nick Hutchings. The winner of the bet was Nick Kempe, who guessed 3hrs 37 mins!
We return to San Francisco next Friday, to wrap up our training out there as we build up towards the World Championships (our first Olympic Qualifier) in Perth in December.
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