Overnight to Newport

The Volvo Ocean Race is in America and right next door in Newport RI.  We took off at 14:00 from Boston with a plan to hit the Canal by 23:00.  At first the winds were pretty brisk and right behind us.  We considered whether or not to reef the main at first.  And every sailor knows - if you're considering... just do it.  We didn't.  As soon as we turned a little upwind in Presidents Roads, we got knocked over very handily in some 30+ gusts.

Then we reefed and sailed with no jib for a while.

As we got around Hull and were able to turn more downwind we eventually put up the full main and the Jib.  The wind softened a bit and so we traded the jib for the reacher.  Now, we had a nice long stretch of 8.5kt sailing with about 14kts coming over the beam.


Once we got a few miles south of Plymouth, the wind pretty suddenly died. We motored the rest of the way to the canal.

Sunset

We hit the canal about 21:30 right at peak current and flew through it at 10.5kts.  Once on the other side, there was no wind so we just kept motoring.  Good news is that buzzards was nice and flat.

Around 02:00, we got a little breeze. With 24 miles to go to Newport, we put up the main and reacher and tried to sail for a while.  We were mostly in the low 3's which would have gotten us to Newport later than we wanted.

We gave up and started motoring again and Linda took over watch.

And Sunrise

Linda woke me up about 06:30 as we pulled into Newport Harbor.  As we passed Fort Adams, we did a drive-by of the Volvo boats