{"id":477,"date":"2000-08-17T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2000-08-17T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/?p=477"},"modified":"2012-03-07T20:19:18","modified_gmt":"2012-03-08T01:19:18","slug":"s_logs-dashew-dashew56","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/s_logs-dashew-dashew56\/","title":{"rendered":"Nantucket Bucket"},"content":{"rendered":"
Here’s the skinny on the Nantucket Bucket race.<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

The Nantucket Bucket was an “interesting” experience, to say the least. An incredible array of mega sailing power assembled to do battle – with boats ranging in size from Beowulf’s diminuitive 78′ (and a couple of slightly smaller vessels) to the largest sloop in the world, the 159′ Georgia – with an average boat length of around 110′.<\/p>\n

This is a pursuit race – the fastest start behind the theoretically slower – and whomever crosses the line first wins. The handicap system is secret, and adjusted between the Saturday and Sunday race.<\/p>\n

We didn’t know what to think about our chances, but we knew the boat watching would be great. <\/p>\n

Saturday morning came with a moderate nor-easter. At the skipper’s meeting handicaps were given out and we found that we would be starting at the same time as the 137′ Farr sloop Mirabella lll – sounds OK to us, as long as it is a reach out and back, which it is supposed to be.<\/p>\n

The first boats off the line were Freedom ( 125′ Ketch) and Helios ( 112′ sloop). 32 minutes later it was our turn. With the wind blowing high teens and backed to the NNE (making the first two legs a beat) we had our work cut out for us.<\/p>\n

As crew for the weekend we had Dan Neri, his brother Jeff, and Dad Gene aboard. We jockeyed back and forth with Mirabella, trying to make sure we had clear air, hitting the start line with the gun and a full head of steam. We were overlapped, with our bow slightly in front, and with any normal boat would have held the leeward boat back with dirty air. But this is a 137-footer, and she put her longer waterline to work and started to march out to weather.<\/p>\n

We were soon getting large doses of dirty air, and watching them outpoint and outfoot us.<\/p>\n

On the first two legs, both upwind, we sailed a less-than-perfect race – probably footing off to much trying to pass boats to leeward, rather than just eating dirty air and passing to weather. By the time we rounded second mark we’d passed a bunch of boats, but had also been passed by a couple of 112-120 footers.<\/p>\n

The downwind leg was 150 true, way to broad to get Beowulf up on a plane in the moderate winds. Still, with the asymetric spinnaker and mizzen genoa drawing we started passing boats at a great clip. By the end of this leg the breeze had come up a couple of knots to around 18-20, and gone forward a few degrees. We were doing a steady 15, probably three knots faster than the other boats. If only the race had been a few miles longer….<\/p>\n

Beowulf ended up a disapointing 7th, and we anchored to discuss the day’s events, and lick slightly injured pride.<\/p>\n

Sunday came with signs of a nice breeze, with the wind more in the east. This was what we came for, we were thinking. A head reach out, short beat, and broad reach back.<\/p>\n

But alas, the urge to shop in Nantucket’s many enticing mercantile establishments was too strong for some of the competition, and it looked like rain, so the regatta was called after one race.<\/p>\n

The victory went to Freedom – first to start, and first to finish. Second was the 101-footer Ripple (who started just after Freedom), and third was Mirabella.<\/p>\n

Maybe we’ll come back next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s the skinny on the Nantucket Bucket race.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[145,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beowulf-logs","category-dashew-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}