Click the photo to see more pictures from the Pineapple Cup!

On Monday February 6, Prospector crossed the finish line in Montego Bay, Jamaica to capture the team’s first victory in the new boat.  The 800 mile course started off Miami, arcing east then south outside of the Bahamas before diving through the Windward Passage between Cuba and Haiti to Montego Bay.  The win was also the the team’s first true offshore test in the new vessel.  Prospector crossed the line approximately 1.5 hours after Wizard a Reichel/Pugh 74, but ultimately corrected ahead.  Joining the team for the race was Ken Read, whose countless offshore miles helped the team rise to the occasion.

The race started in very light air for the beat to Great Isaac’s and much of the first leg was spent moving bodies from rail to rail in order to maintain optimum heel.  By sunset, the breeze had established itself, and the team spent the evening dodging squalls and playing the shifts until rounding Great Isaac around 2130 hours.  Shortly after rounding, the team enjoyed some excitement when the tack shackle on J1.5 broke, releasing halyard tension up the forestay ripping the bolt rope out from the luff.  The J2 was quickly hoisted as replacement, and the J1.5 sent down below for repair by Henry Little.  Prospector pressed on with the J2 until Harbor Island some 7 hours later.

At Harbor Island, the foredeck crew went back to work, swapping the J2 for a double-headed rig with the FRO and the Genoa Staysail; a configuration carried to to the Northern tip of Eleuthera, which the team approached at approximately 1000 on of February 4.  At this point, rumors of clementines and apples in the ice box started circulating on deck.

By 1500 that afternoon, only a handful of miles separated Prospector and Wizard as the two teams pressed south along Cat Island.  Wizard, having more confidence in their charts, took an inshore route, shaving critical miles off the course, while Prospector opted for a more conservative route and kept offshore.

As evening approached, so did more squalls.  With the breeze topping up into the low 30’s, the crew experimented with a single reefed main behind the double headed rig, but ultimately opted to furl the FRO, replacing it with the jib top.  This configuration would carry the team into a strong East shift, bringing the breeze back on the nose and forcing a sail change back to the J2 and an upwind configuration.  Here, with the crew still on the rail in full hike mode and a persistently lumpy sea state, we began to wonder if we would ever see the downwind and reaching conditions this race was known for.

Fortunately, we wouldn’t have to wait much longer.  By 1500 hours Sunday February 5, Prospector had cleared the windward passage, hoisted the A2 and had begun surfing the final miles to Jamaica.  This was the first time near Cuba for most of the crew, and we were awed by the rugged, mountainous terrain lit up by the sinking sun.  Of course, we didn’t have much time for sightseeing; it was Super Bowl Sunday, and the boat was packed with Patriots fans.

A short wave radio was produced from down below, and Dr. Dave Siwicki set about trying to find the Armed Forces Radio Network in time for the game.  Without a doubt, one of the more surreal moments of the team’s adventures yet was surfing south of Guantanamo Bay at sunset while the National Anthem crackled across the short wave.  Of course, we all stood and removed our hats.

At this point, Prospector was surfing through 15-22 knots of boatspeed, gybing on the shifts to maximize VMG.  While it was all hands on deck for the gybes, the crew was careful to keep one person manning the radio to keep the team updated with the play by play.   Despite champagne conditions, spirits flagged as the game wore on. Fortunately, a fourth quarter rally by the Pats corresponded to a beautiful moonlight night as we ticked off the final miles.

Monday February 6 brought a bright beautiful morning and our first views of Jamaica. By 0900 it was all hands on deck as we continued to gybe on the shifts along the Jamaican shore. Despite sore muscles and tired eyes, each member of the crew put everything he had into the final maneuvers. Just outside Montego Bay, we were greeted by the photo boat who paced us across the line and offered our first official welcome to Jamaica.  At 1030, we crossed the finish line second, but well within the 3 hour window we needed to catch Wizard. Our first offshore race and first victory in the new boat; you could not find a happier crew. With a few minor exceptions, Prospector had sailed a complete, mistake free race.

What cannot be overlooked about the Pineapple Cup was the hospitality of the Montego Bay Yacht Club, who not only ran a great race, but greeted us at the dock with sandwiches, Jamaican patties and even ice cold Red Stripe. Moreover, upon learning that we would not be able to attend that Friday’s awards ceremony, they arranged an impromptu (albeit hushed) awards ceremony to present us with the Pineapple Cup, a trophy previously held by such sailing luminaries as Jim Kilroy, Ted Turner and even our own Skip Helme!  Naturally, we filled it with rum, toasted our victory and reflected on a wonderful 3 days.

Sorry we haven’t updated for a while, but during our silence we made some exciting upgrades to our site!  We’ve made it easier for you to find out what we are up to, track our races and share as much color from each event as possible.  Check back here over the season from reports onboard plus photos and videos from our races.

We’ll also keep you up to date with program news, schedule and race trackers.

After sitting in her cradle since November, enjoying a rigorous schedule of refits, repairs and upgrades, the mighty Prospector returns to the water in fighting shape!  The Silver Canoe and her crew are ready to shake off any winter cobwebs and tackle the 41st annual Ft. Lauderdale to Key West Race.  Starting at 1300 hrs on Wednesday January 11, the 160 mile sprint to the Conch Republic will offer an exciting start to the 2017 campaign as the team looks to get back in race mode and have a crack at the course record of 10 hours 24 minutes set by Joe Dockery on the R/P 81 Carrera in 2005.

The weather briefing offers the perfect antidote to the snowy cold currently gripping the North East.  Temps in the upper 70s with 15-20 knot easterlies should make for a great ride to Key West, offering the opportunity to quickly get down to the many watering holes on Duval Street provided the team is able to find relief from a strong northerly flow of the Gulf Stream.

Challenging Prospector for line honors will be familiar foes like Wizard, Privateer and Chessie Racing - all of whom will be eager to kick 2017 off with a bullet.  Here’s hoping Prospector and her crew keep them in the rear view mirror!

Join the adventure!  Follow the race through the  official tracker and look for updates from on deck via @prospectorsailing on Instagram.

Porto Cervo

11 September 2016

It was an amazing day on the water yesterday for Team Prospector.  We needed a win to have any shot of improving our standings in the regatta.  We not only won, we smashed it.

We lead the race wire to wire.  Our lead increased at every mark of the course 1.5 minutes, 2 minutes, 4 minutes, 6.5 minutes, 12 minutes and finally 15 minutes over Lucky who rounded each mark behind us. Lucky is an exceptional yacht, sailed by a very talented crew.  She has a great pedigree, winning the Transatlantic Race in 2015 and the Sydney Hobart race in 2011.  We knew going in she would be stiff competition and a good benchmark for the new Prospector and her crew.

We sailed a perfect race. None of us could recall a single mistake over the entire 25 nautical mile course.  We had no drama.  Nothing broke.  The boat was the quietest it had been for the whole regatta.  Everyone kept their head down, a hard thing to do on such a scenically beautiful course, and did their job.  Sail changes and crew work were flawless, Peter’s tactics and Paul’s driving perfect.  I kept us from hitting anything.  Prospector responded to our efforts and was just fast, fast, fast.

I didn’t get to take a look at the results we were back at the villa for a post awards party celebratory dinner.  I knew from the splits above that we had sailed well.  To finish ahead of Lucky by that margin was instant confirmation that we sailed a great race yesterday.  When I reviewed the results quietly and saw the margins we won by it dawned on me what an accomplishment yesterday’s effort was.

We finished second, 2 points behind Atalanta II and 1 point ahead of Lucky.  The 6 points we got when we were scored DNF after we withdrew when our headstay broke in the second race was too big an obstacle to overcome in a short series.  Though it is hard to not to think about what the results would have been had we gone on to win a race we were leading before the headstay broke, we have no regrets.  Second place in our first event, in our first time at this regatta with virtually no time in the boat is a tremendous outcome.

After the race the crew loaded all the gear back on Prospector and Tery and a few of the crew took her back to Olbia to get her ready to be shipped back to the US at the end of the month.  Some headed to the airport to begin the trip home.  The rest of us took up residence in the bar at the Yacht Club Costa Smerelda and began a proper celebration that lasted through the awards party and dinner at the villa and long in to the night.

Prospector

Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup

Porto Cervo, Italy

10 September 2016

Our headstay failure and DNF on Thursday moved us from first to third in the regatta standings.  We knew before the start on Friday that to win the regatta we needed to win the remaining two races.  We also needed to get some help from the other yachts in our class by having them finish between us and Lucky. 

 

Tery, Quinn, Lu, Scotty and assorted others brought the Prospector back from Olbia first thing Friday morning.  After a little modification, the spare headstay was installed and we were ready to race again.  Hats off to them and a bunch of the crew who helped them with the repair well into Thursday evening.  We docked out at 1000, hoping as Paul wrote yesterday, for no more small things.

 

Thankfully, we got most of what we were hoping for.  We got out to the starting area and for the first time this week went through our prestart routine with no drama.  What at difference to be able to focus on getting the boat ready to go and set up early for our start without having our heads in the boat dealing with some pesky little issue that needed to be sorted before we could start.

 

The RC called for a coastal race with a drop mark for a two mile windward leg followed by port roundings of the islands of Monaci, and La Madelena, then down Bomb Alley, to a drop mark just south of Porto Cervo and a finish off the entrance to Porto Cervo. 

 

We had a good start and quickly pulled to the front of our fleet.  The wind, which had been 12-16 knots at 320 quickly, began to lighten to 6-10 knots and vary between 280 and 320.  Sometimes it was better to be left, other times better to be right.  Near the mark it become very unstable as the yachts in the fleets that started ahead of us chopped the wind up on their approach.  Lucky and Atalanta II, caught the last shift and rounded ahead of us.

 

That didn’t last.   Peter Isler called an amazing next leg, stepping us up to stronger winds on the north side of the next leg and keeping us in phase with the shifts.  It is a pretty cool thing to be alongside one of the best in the business when he is doing his thing.  By the next mark we had built a sizeable lead which we never relinquished. 

 

We rounded the top of La Madelena and progressed through our sail changes as we went from beat to reach to run.  First we put up a genoa staysail under our J1, then our masthead AO with a spinnaker staysail, and finally an A1.5 and ss.  The crew work was amazing, all those sails went up and down on time flawlessly. Paul did a great job driving and we were going fast and extending on the boats behind us.

 

As we began gybing down Bomb Alley we could see the wind getting lighter and shifting in front of us.  It looked like the 10-12 kt westerly we were enjoying was going to become a very light northwesterly.  Tery heard a garbled announcement from the RC that sounded like our course was being shortened at our next mark.

 

We put our heads down and did all we could to make the Prospector go as fast as we could.  It was our best sailing sequence of the regatta.  In preparation for the shift to a light northerly we furled and sank the ss and got a J1 ready, hoisting it half way.  When we hit the shift the J1 went up the rest of the way and the A1.5 came down, but was kept in ready position on the deck to redeploy.  Next we readied the AO.  As we progressed further we went from J1 to AO and then back to A1.5 all in minutes as we neared the finish.  Dave Tank, the hardest working man in sailing, lead his bow crew through these changes masterfully.  We were now really legging out on the boats behind us.

 

There was just one minor problem.  We couldn’t see the finish boat.  We reread the SI’s and the course chart to make sure we hadn’t overlooked something.  We hadn’t.  We searched Bomb Alley with binoculars but saw nothing.  Confused, we decided our best course of action was to record our own time and sail the rest of the course.  When we crossed the original finish line we recorded our time again and headed for the dock.

 

When we docked in Peter and Larry headed to the race office to try to sort things out.  As we were walking down the dock a YCCS official approached us and told us that the Principal Race Officer wanted to see us.  We now knew for sure something was amiss.  When we got to the race office Peter Craig, the PRO confirmed what we had already surmised.  The RC had no record of our finish.  He asked if we had heard the shorten course announcement.  We told him we had, but that it was garbled and we thought the course was being shortened at Kilo.  The RC told us that the course had been shortened at Lima the mark BEFORE Kilo and that they were checking the tracker to confirm when we went through that finish line and filing a request for redress on our behalf.

 

It turned out that we went through the shortened course finish line three minutes BEFORE the finish line was set.  We compared our log files with the tracking results with the jury and were granted redress.  When the dust settled we finished second, behind Atalanta II and ahead of Lucky.

 

So we didn’t get a completely drama free day.  Though at least this time it had nothing to do with the boat or the crew (Matthew Landry managed to stay aboard the boat).  Shortening the course cost us first place because we had continued to gain on both Atalanta II and Lucy after the short course finish.  The point we lost, together with the four or five points we lost on Thursday, likely limit us to at best a second place finish in the event.  That is a bit of a shame because if we got all those points back we would have a commanding lead in our class.

 

It is tough to be disappointed though.  We sailed very, very well.  Particularly when things got light and shifty.  As we have written before the sequence of sail changes is easy to write but incredibly difficult to execute.  We handled them spectacularly.

 

So, on to Saturday, the last day of the event.  We are raring to go and intend to do the only thing we can to help our standings, win.  Everything else will sort itself out.