Logged 788 Nautical Miles

Sailed 118 Hours

First Leg - St Lucia to Columbia

The Rally began in drizzly, squally weather and Smoke and Roses had a near perfect start. Some of the monohulls rounded up and a couple other blew their spinnakers out. After making the first mark with Barrel of Beef Island to starboard and the Columbian coast to port we headed east into the Caribbean Sea. Within a few hours we set our sails wing and wing (forward sail out to port and main sail out to starboard) for downwind sailing. While the monohulls preferred to tack across the sea going southwest then northwest, we set a course going west and stayed there. Other than putting in and taking out reefs, we didn’t change our sails for three days, 489 nautical miles. It was noon on Tuesday when we changed our course and started sailing on a broad reach with easterly winds on our port side.

Other than the first day the weather has been very nice daytime temps around 80, mostly sunny and the wind averaging 18-24. The weather summary prior to the race warned of squally showers on Tuesday, an increase in squalls west of the ABC Islands and strong bands of wind along the Columbian coast but we did not experience any of them until the last 15. We had some more extreme conditions on the North West coast of Columbia, the wind built to over 30 knots and the sea state increased due to the convergence and shallow water. Then after rounding the point of Isla De La Aguja, just 5 nautical miles to the finish the wind dies to2 knots. Several boats motored to the finish and will take a penalty for doing so.

Twice each day there was a roll call on the SSB Radio. One boat volunteered to be the net controller and requested information from each boat regarding position, wind, engine hours and any information regarding damage, fish caught and wild life seen. One morning when Mark, the Skipper on Mad Monkey, was the controller he created a fun challenge for everyone use the letters in their boat name to come up with words or phrases and report them that evening. It was fun to hear how the other 36 boats were doing.

We caught a nice tuna on Sunday, our second day, after a couple large fish got away. On Monday we broke our speed record of 14 knots by going 15.4 knots for a short time while surfing down a wave with three reefs and wind gusts to mid-30. Our first sail change was on Tuesday and on Wednesday when the wind was less than 10 knots we flew a spinnaker for the second time ever with mixed results. Thursday was the painfully slow finish that took 3 ½ hours to go 5 nautical miles. Overall it was a very good passage

Perhaps as we get more long legs under our belt I will feel different, but for now three is the minimum crew I am comfortable with for a leg this long as I would not want to push myself any harder. Having Scott with us as crew, made the voyage easier on me, as he is very capable sailor.