40 Degrees' first race of the year

Date: 31/01/2010
Sam Goodchild is in Antigua, preparing 40 Degrees for the season, and yesterday he competed in the race around Antigua. Here is his report:
We arrived in English Harbour with about 6minutes to the start, picked up a forth crew member out of a RIB and started a bit late but safely which was priority. The first bit of the Race was a beat for about 2 hours, with 1reef and the staysail. Had a interesting first few tacks with everyone getting used to the boat and in all the excitement of showing everyone how we were going to do it, i forgot the ballast on the wrong side once or twice. As far as i was concerned it wasn't too bad a thing to forget.


We then started bearing away to about 90-100 TWA, and to avoid having to do the Gennaker to spinnaker change over we just used the Solent and full main, where we were power reaching at a steady 12-13knots and surfing faster. We then put up the newly reshaped A2, for its first test sail. We were all pretty impressed by the repair and the foot thankfully didn't drag in the water any more which was nice. We then shot down the back end of the island overtaking the Ondeck Farr 65 and a local open 30, which started an hour ahead of us.


Then Second half of the race was a bit more boring, light reaching in the lee of the island and then a beat to the finish, where we had a little bit of trouble furling he solent and lost a batten which, fortunately was our only breakage of the day. However, the best sailing of the day was going home after the finish where we put up the A2 again but the seas were a bit bigger and we had a couple surfs upto 18-19knots which, was pretty exciting and a good way to end the day. But, after 12 hours on the water we were all pretty shattered. Apparently we won our class and therefore a bottle of Rum.
The crew was the old skipper, first mate and a deck hand of Velsheda and we all had a great time