Key West Race Week 2007.
Better Than… put on some mileage this year, close to 13000 NM, which would be over half the distance of most around the globe races. Well, some of it by ship and truck, but still…
We did some IRC racing against smaller boats in Key West and against the big boys in Miami, some vicious one-design in blustering England, some sunny quiet Sardinia and some medium Lanzarotte. We also raced offshore from Stockholm to Szczecin with the tall ships and the not so tall.
We flew the courtesy flags of 11 countries and Corsica, which pretends not to be French for good reason.
Our program involved more people than ever before. I had to get a larger address book to keep track of the overflowing contacts. We made lots of new friends and met up with the old ones. New people, new ideas, new goals, new places.
Key West Race Week was the first proper IRC event for us. We didn’t really have a chance to check our abilities with the masthead shoots and long pole before, so it was a very interesting experience racing against the Swan 42 Esmeralda with Ken Read and his bionic pro crew.
Our team was as good as ever with Chris & Waldek Zaleski, Britt Hughes, Peter McCloskey, Devin Santa, Max Hutter, Steve Hoffman with a stomach virus, Marc Reiss, Jahoo Glinski, John Malloy, Marcus Schlesinger from Austria and the Rojek clan; Gosia, Andrzej, Marcin and Paulina virtually from France. Nina joined us for few days of sunbathing and partying.
Marcin could not stay beyond Monday, so Waldek took the helm for the rest of the week. It was practically a two-boat regatta. We didn’t see much of the other boats after the start. However, Spirito Malouen, Synergia 40, a very well sailed boat from France with a killer rating and very ugly paint job, corrected over us in every single race.
The general feeling, reinforced by Ken Read’s article for NYYC, was that we don’t have much of a chance to beat a 42 in IRC. Boat per boat we have even speed up wind, downwind they are faster in light breeze. We had only one race in medium breeze (up to 15kt) and they managed to sail as low as we and probably faster.
That was perhaps the best Swan 42 that will ever be sailing with pro driver and crew, but we knew right then and there that we have to join the other 45s to have fun.
One design baby…
We had a good time with cooking competitions every night (can’t tell who won) and a little bit of a party here and there. Special mention goes to Nina for her leadership in that department and Diana for an endless supply of Key lime pie.
For me that felt like vacation; having all those pro captains doing my job, running up and down the mast and playing with Harken grease, while I was sipping rum in the trailer.
Gosia, Devin and Nicola helped with deliveries. On the upwind way back we hoisted the trysail for the first time ever and while unrolling it, we found in the flakes an extremely dehydrated family of mice, very sad.