Season 2 Starts Now!

Arrived in France last week and preparing for the first race

Terminal Leave, USA 837

This season I am focused on finishing my qualification process for the Mini Transat and improving my performance on the race course.  Now that I have made it to France, it is time to put this plan into action.

Terminal Leave is almost finished getting some new paint in the shop.  The bottom looks fast and I am excited to get her back in the water.  The fluorescent colored paint is to make the boat compliant for racing in a “level A” race, or a race with a leg over 1,000 miles long.  In addition to having fluorescent colored paint on the keel and rudders, a 1 m x 0.6 m rectangular area must be painted on the hull surrounding the keel.  This bright colored paint helps rescuers spot an over turned mini (which hopefully I will never need!).

Jane Millman just arrived to help me prepare Terminal Leave for racing.  Over the next week and a half, we have a lot to do.  This includes raising the mast, rigging the boat, calibrating the electronics, tuning the rig, and preparing the boat for more offshore racing.  Throughout this process we will perform a shake down sail and get quality training in before the first race.

The week after Jane leaves, my friend Yannick will arrive from Galway Bay, Ireland.  He is a sailmaker with Quantum and competed in the Mini Transat last year.  We plan to make at least one overnight training session on the boat together since Yannick will be my co-skipper for the upcoming Mini-Fastnet race in June.  This is the only double handed event I will participate in this season and I look forward to learning all I can from Yannick.

My first race this season starts 17 May and is called the Mini en Mai.  This 500 nm solo race is a loop off the French coast in the Bay of Biscay.  This race has the potential for severe weather and is known for strong currents towards the northern end of the course.  Sailing through the Raz de Sein can be difficult enough for a delivery (thinking back to my first overnight sail through this area last season), but this time I will be racing alone.  Don’t forget we turn in our phones for the race and cannot have any chart plotter on board, so we plot our course on paper charts using the lat/long from the boat’s GPS.  It can get very challenging at night with big seas and dangerous rocks.

That is all for now, time to get working on the boat!

Don’t forget! To make this campaign possible, I am asking for your support through donations on my GoFundMe page.  This helps cover the many administrative and logistical costs required to get me on the race course.  Click the button below for more information:

Thank you for your support. Please continue to help by telling your friends and family about my mission!