MacIntosh Newport Bermuda Friday (Day 1)

Kris and I got down the boat at around 10am.

The start order and class splits were announced; we were in class 12 (10th start) at 14:40.

All of us were stowing gear and getting the boat organized.

We ran a second reefing line in the boom using one of the main battens to push it through:

We next got the battens in the main sail:

Luca and Derek went off to fill the propane tank.

We shoved off the dock at 13:00.

It was about 6 miles to the start area.

We checked in with the registration boat at 13:15:

This is MacIntosh sail number CAN 34539 with 7 souls on board

Near the start line, we hoisted the main a little after 13:30

The motor went off at 13:46.  With almost 200 boats in the harbour PLUS many spectator boats.
A VHF alarm went off advising us of high congestion of boats in Newport Harbour. 

The spectator crowd onshore was HUGE:

I got to take the helm before the start in the mayhem:

The winds were 25+ knots constant, so we decided to put a reef in.

At our 10 minute warning signal, we went to hoist the #3, BUT we had the heavy #1 on deck!
Down she came, stuffed in the hatch, and up with the #3.  Little scrambly, but we had a good midline start:

They say a video is worth 1,024 words:

We were in race mode, close hauled with reef and #3 doing 8 knots!

After clearing Newport Harbour, the winds were down to less than 18 knots, so we shook out the reef:

15:45

We boar away and hoisted the asym:

TWS: 9.4 knots
AWA 100

BSP 6.1

We did a couple of gybes, and only wrapped the asym once.

Water temperature was 59 degrees.

We had a pod of dolphins come check out MacIntosh when we started the motor to charge the batteries and cool the fridge.  Think they heard the noise and came over to investigate.

First night sunset:

First night moonrise:

Time on the last photo was 23:08

40.779N 70.866W