Follow Prospector at the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup

 

Here is how to follow our escapades in Porto Cervo.

 

The event is hosted by the Yacht Club Costa Smerelda, the YCCS website is:

 

http://www.yccs.it

 

 

The Regatta Website is:

 

http://www.yccs.it/en/regate-2016/documenti/maxi_yacht_rolex_cup__rolex_maxi_72_world_championship-227.html

 

On the regatta website you will find links for race documents, results, photos and videos.

 

 

Race Tracking is provided by TracTrac:

 

http://www.tractrac.com/web/event-page/event_20160827_MaxiYachtR/879/

Hurry up and wait is an inherent aspect of all sail boat races, from Optis to Maxis.  We are currently in a shore postponement here at the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup because the wind is blowing too hard in the racing area.  Instead of first warning signals at 1130, the race committee is keeping us in the barn hoping that winds will ease, allowing them to start us racing around 1430.  The Prospector team is scattered around the Yacht Club Costa Smerelda, checking out the amazing yachts here, havinga coffee in the café,  or just sitting in the shade people watching.  For Tery, Quinn, Lu and Scotty it means a welcome few hours to continue working on the punch list on Prospector.  In my case it means hanging out in the YCCS bar, no shock there to those who know me, staying out of the sun in an air conditioned environment working on my nav set up and this post.

 

Those of you who have tracked our previous adventures know that when we go quiet it means things have gotten busy.  Busy we have been.  We now have three, count ‘em three practice days in the boat.  Those three days are everything and nothing.  We have learned an amazing amount, both about the boat and each other.

 

The key take aways are:

 

We have an amazing yacht.  She is beautiful, fast, strong and safe.

 

We have some amazing people here teaching us how to sail her.  Endless thanks to Peter Isler, Gordon Maguire, Bob McCarthy, Dave Tank and Dave Scott for passing on their boundless knowledge with such enthusiasm and patience.

 

We have an amazing crew.  We knew that already but these last three days have just proved it all over again.  This is a big step up from the Farr 60.  Everyone has upped their game responding to the challenge with their usual enthusiasm and humor.  We are all in a doctorate level sailing course and learning as fast as we can.

 

Things happen fast on the new Prospector.  We are sailing at 10 knots upwind and 18-20 knots downwind.  The sails are huge and heavy.  It takes a team of three to move them.  The loads on halyards and sheets are immense.  When all four bikes are linked and eight people are on them things fly.  At the top mark kites go up and jibs come down.  At the bottom mark the dance starts five minutes out, bikes ready, staysail furled, staysail down, jib up, kite down.  The sequence is easy to write.  Getting it all down while barreling down the course at nearly 20 knots is hard.  Everything has to happen in its time and on time.  Fall behind the sequence and you can’t catch up.  Each of us depends on the other to get the job done.  The first couple of times we have tried each maneuvre things went badly.  Slowly and steadily we are getting better.  But each time, like the proverbial box of chocolates, you never know what we are going to get.

 

We are scheduled for five coastal races.  We have mixed emotions about not doing any windward/leeward races.  Not doing them takes off a bit of pressure, but it also means we won’t have the chance to learn from doing them.

 

Time to go check in on the boat.  Will try to get a post up tonight about our first race.

 

Keep you fingers crossed for us!

The Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup was born to provide the largest, most powerful yachts with an opportunity to compete directly in a suitably challenging environment. Continuing that philosophy, it is also widely regarded as a showcase for the latest advances in design and technology.

Prospector Mk II

Well here we go. As many of you know, since we last posted from the Rolex Middle Sea Race in October 2015, we continued to have a great run with our Farr 60 Prospector. After a well-earned third place in that race, we shipped her from Italy to the Caribbean where she raced the 2016 Caribbean season both on charter and with our partners. We closed the season with a solid win in the Maxi II class at the Les Voiles de Saint Barth regatta beating both Ian Walker and Bouwe Bekking who finished first and second in last year’s Volvo Ocean Race.  Not bad. To say we had a good time in St. Barths is an understatement of epic proportions. And it made us hungry for more.

 

Alas, while we loved Prospector, she was showing her age and we decided that it was time to send her on to the next owner who could find out like we did what a great boat she is. While we definitely had the fever to keep going with another boat, we decided we would take some time to maybe let the fever break. That idea lasted all of five seconds.

 

Even before Prospector was hauled out of the water in June, we had already looked at more than a dozen boats both on the internet and in person. After a bit of flirtation with a smaller boat, a TP52 or maybe even a multihull, the continuing partners Dave Lawn Dart Siwicki (or as I call him, Too Deep Dave), Larry Pol Pot Landry and your humble correspondent decided on our “design brief”. Design brief is fancy yacht talk for what we wanted the boat to be able to do. It’s pretty simple really: we wanted a more modern boat that can plane downwind, is safe and comfortable for long ocean races (comfortable being a relative term), can compete well day racing, has a decent head and navigation station for said ocean racing and can be sailed competitively by our mixed team of Corinthians and pro sailors. It’s so simple that it fits in a sentence but very hard to find in the real world with our budget.

 

In looking around, we kept coming back to a single boat, a Mills 68 built by New England Boatworks in 2008 originally named Alegre and now named Caol Ila R. The boat had been impeccably maintained by both owners and was constantly upgraded. She has an unbelievable race record. The designer Mark Mills designed White Witch as well so we liked that. The more people we talked to, the more we kept hearing that this would be a terrific boat for us. Oh…and she is conveniently located in Sardinia.

 

As is typical of Larry, once we figured out this boat could work for us, he set about making it happen. If it wasn’t complicated enough buying a boat in Europe from a European owner with virtually everyone on vacation for the month of August over there, Larry decided we could not only buy the boat but be ready to race our first event at the Maxi Yacht Cup hosted by the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda in Porto Cervo, Italy.  After all, the boat was already in Sardinia!  We made a After a quick trip to Sardinia in mid August to test sail the boat – let’s just say we were pretty impressed – followed by our team taking the boat for a little shakedown cruise to Albania, for tax reasons, here we are, ready to go with a new Prospector on a new adventure.

 

Our crack team of Tery Glackin, Quinn Tobin and Lucien Moore have been in Europe for a month working tirelessly getting all this done. Our heartfelt thanks to them. They were recently joined by the inimitable Scotty Tompkins and the rest of us will fly over later this week for a few days of practice followed by the regatta start next Sunday. While it has all happened super quickly, we have gathered a top notch crew to sail with us including sailing legend Peter Isler and the designer of the boat Mark Mills. We have some new pro sailors with terrific pedigrees including Volvo experience also sailing with us to help us learn to sail what is definitely a big step up from the old Prospector. Veterans from the Transat that are back for another round include: Matt Landry, Henry Little, Tim Keyworth and Andrew Wolf joined by newer crew members that have sailed more recently on the old Prospector, Stuart McNeil and Dennis Willette. All in all, it will take 20 of us to get this boat around the course.

 

While we know we have a very fast boat and some outstanding sailors on our team, this will be our first event and so we are tempering our expectations but not our competitive spirit. No matter what, the setting will certainly be photogenic and we will post pictures and updates as the week progresses. We are proud to represent the Shelter Island Yacht Club and the New York Yacht Club sailing what it is one of the marquee events in the world of yacht racing. While it is impossible to predict the result, it is possible to know already from a deep reservoir of recent experience that we will have fun. More later. 

Click on the link below to see a Flickr collection of pictures of the yacht in her previous incarnations as Allegre and Caol Ila R prepared for us by our yacht broker and good friend Bill Titus.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/nandjnewport/albums/72157668346721365

We will get some photos of our own up soon.