Clare joined Robbie and I on the Leopard 47 "Spirit of Everest" but, even reefed and without a spinnaker, we were still short handed, no autopilots allowed in this race! Our instruments were still causing problems - the echo sounder read 100ft when tied to the dock in Barbados, wind speeds varied hugely depending on which dial we looked at and worst, although the chart plotter showed where we where, we were unable to enter any waypoints. So Robbie had to resort to "old fashioned" paper charts and a pencil.

 

We set 2 hour on/off watches, although a couple of times it was "all hands on deck" during squalls - which often meant a major wind direction change, tricky when we were goosewinged. At 2am we could see three other nav lights, all ahead. So we weren't feeling too good about our speed or tactics. But it turned out that, as the night wore on, the others were doing worse than us. For in the morning there was no one in sight ahead and one sail on the horizon behind.

 

 

At last we were back in phone range and could see the race on the Yellow Brick tracker. To our surprise there were only two boats ahead, and not that far away either. Later we learnt that one had trawled their spinnaker, while another yacht had theirs ripped in half. Undaunted by the weather Clare baked bread, part of her normal daily routine, on land or at sea.

 

 

As we neared Carriacou the wind started to moderate so we went for full mainsail and, with Robbie's local knowledge, started zigzagging, far closer to the reefs than I would have done. Then around the last headland and hardened up for the beat to the finish.

 

 

By then we knew the first two boats had finished just 3 minutes apart, we finished third but - because of the decreasing wind, we were 3 hours later. The last finisher trailed in 12 hours behind us.

 

A day off before the Round Carriacou race, which gave us time to appreciate the devastation that hurricane Beryl had caused 6 months earlier. Still lots of blue tarp roofs and piles of rubble that used to be houses, all reminiscent of Dorian which had destroyed our Skoota powercat and the Bahamian Abaco islands back in 2019.

 

 

The boatyard was still home to many destroyed boats, while I counted over 20 mastless boats afloat in the anchorage. Sadly these included a Sagitta, sistership to my own catamaran. Apparently the wind gust were strong enough to vibrate and then flex deck-stepped masts off their bases, while keel stepped monohulls lost theirs when the boats capsized on the moorings.