2008 New England 100

Photo courtesy of Bill Vining

The New England 100 is a approximately 100 mile race, over the course of 2 days, which starts at Quonset Point in North Kingston, RI and finishes at the same point. There are 5 race course options that included sailing around the islands of Rhode Island.

Talk about an amazing weekend! Started off light (practically no breeze) both mornings and just past the Jamestown bridge the trust Newport seabreeze graced us with it's presence and led to double trapping in a steady 15-18.

The days were almost identical... upwind out the West passage, around the tip of Beavertail, down through the East passage, flying through Newport Harbor with the spinnakers up, passing through the Lighting class North American Championships', the N.Y.Y.C. team race, several other regattas, and the armada of boats anchored off Fort Adams listening to the Jazz Festival. It's really and awesome place to sail and a great place to give our boats publicity!

Mike and I led from the start on Saturday, but got sucked into a black hole by the Jamestown bridge and got passed by half the fleet. We managed to escape and find some wind and hang with the rest of the fleet and catch back up to the leaders. Unfortunatley as the day progressed, Mike and I were a bit off pace and let Chris Titcomb and Joe Valente get a good lead on us. We still however were a while ahead of the first F-18s. After rounding the North tip of prudence we tried to make up ground on Chris and Joe by sailing along the shore and out of the ripping current... it seemed to be working. By this time it was beautiful sailing, 18 knots double trapped, we were loving life. Our game plan of sailing along the shore included lots of tacking.. well one tack we slipped up and somehow we went into a tack without either of us holding the mainsheet... as I crossed the boat I looked back and saw it was too late, the mainsheet was cleated in tight and we were going over. After flipping we tried to right the boat as fast as possible as we noticed the current was really pushing us back towards the F-18s and they were coming fast! It ended up taking about 10 minutes to right the boat because the current kept pushing the bows out of the wind! It was really frustrating. We righted the boat and got sailing, rounded the South tip of Prudence and ripped on a screaming reach (top speed of 20.4 mph) to Quonset Point finishing 3rd overall but not so well on corrected as the F-18s were right behind us. We figure we lost around 15 minutes in our little ordeal.

The 2nd day featured much of the same course, we were able to lead off the start just as the day before and hold it this time all the way until the Newport bridge. Chris Titcomb was right on our heels so we had our work cut out to beat him overall, but looking back at the 3rd place boat, Joe, we saw we had around a 20 minute lead! Perfect! We had to beat him by around 15 to beat him overall. At the bridge Chris and ourselves split tacks and did our own thing. Once we convereged again several miles later Chris had taken a 5 minute lead. We were sailing nicely just flying a hull with the spinnaker up, headed towards the bell buoy just South of the Mount Hope brdige we were supposed to round. Suddenly, we noticed a rather large obstruction, a GIANT tanker headed directly towards our mark and in the path we needed to sail. By jibing inside it we were able to stay clear and eventually passed it and rounded the mark just ahead of it then got the heck out of its way! At the bell buoy, Chris still had around a 5 minute lead. We had a feeling we could catch him... but as we turned around we noticed the hole rest of the fleet had cut our lead to only about 5 minutes as the seabreeze had built to about 20 and they were coming downwind much faster than we did! Going up the bay, we again split tacks, Chris went right, we went left, hugging the shore to get current relief and take the nice lifts we were finding on this shore. By the time we convereged again at the South tip of Prudence Island we were in the lead again! We rounded Prudence and just like the day before had a screaming reach to Quonset, our lead over Chris grew from 100 feet to about 500 feet and we took line honors for the day. However, the rest of the fleet finished only 6 minutes after us, putting us in not such a good position overall. Now if only we could have the 15 minutes back from the capsize on Saturday.

All and all we had a blast... we could not have asked for better sailing conditions and competition. This was probably one of the best weekends of racing i've had in a long time!