Bitter End Yacht Club, Virgin Gorda, British Virgin Islands

Today was the Defiance Day race here in the epicenter of yacht racing. We started at 10:00 with the first race consisting of a 7 mile leeward course and a second race of a 7 mile windward leg. We did not have Gatorade or anything like that onboard. We had water but people were using that to clean their sunglasses. We had a golden beverage that had some bubbles in it. Not quite sure what it was but it seemed to make everything seem ok.

Apparently there has been a lot of angst over some race that is supposed to take place in Multihulls some time in the near future, or maybe not so near….I am not clear on that. So the idea floated by all the hardcore “amateurs” in attendance here was, why not get that race over with so we can move on.

So Ken Read had his catamaran and I had mine. They were one design Cats and we had our guest crews onboard as usual. Onboard the “Leopard”, we had a great run down to the Bath’s winning the Catamaran division with Captain Jim at the helm. On the way back, Ken won and we finished third, so we tied. Not sure what we solved there but we finished off the contest in the Pub playing pool at the Mount Gay party. As the sun went down, everyone seemed happy and we agreed to meet again tomorrow for more racing.

There were about 15 yachts in the race, most of the “pro’s” were in IC 24’s which we will race in the rest of the week. Tom Leweck of Scuttlebutt fame actually won the Multihull division with two 2nds. Keith Musto of the UK won the IC 24 division. I note that the two skippers have a combined age of 150 years which goes to show you that experience counts in this sport.

For those of you who don’t know the “Bath’s”, it is a very cool rock formation at the west end of Virgin Gorda. There are some caves and deep water pools formed by these massive granite boulders that look like someone placed them there. We had a bar-b-q down there in between the two races.

Yesterday I had a lot of fun racing Hobie Cats with my daughter Allie. She was on the trapeze and I helmed. We managed to have the best score after three races. That was my first multihull racing experience. Today we obviously did not fair as well but the music was much better on the Moorings 4000.

Tomorrow things start to get serious around here….3 boat racing. I have done this once before and am trying to remember how it works. I am not going to sweat it too much tonight though. Maybe tomorrow before the start I will have another think about it.