At 11.30am local time (3.30pm GMT) , Hydrocarbon Logic and the rest of the 34 strong fleet crossed the start line of the Caribbean 600, headed East around the bottom of Antigua. Local conditions boast beautiful sunshine, and 15/20 knots of East/South/East breeze, meaning a beat to the first mark, York island and then a reach northwards to the North Sails mark just off the south coast of Barbuda (remember Pirates of the Caribbean??). At this mark, the spinnakers will come out of their bags and there will be a downwind blast South to the island of Nevis where a turn North towards Saba Island will cause the first main navigation headache. There will be a wind shadow at the back of Nevis so the question will be how far to go offshore.... only time will tell!
At the moment, the crews will be trimming for every last ounce of boat speed onboard, whilst marvelling at the wonderful sight of all the other yachts around them in the magnificent Caribbean sunshine, it doesn’t get much better than this, as they say!
The crew this morning were up early and raring to go. We spoke to the team at 7am local time, when they were packing their bags and heading off to the marina. The boat was ready to go by yesterday afternoon, so all that was required this morning was to step aboard and go. Philippe downloaded the latest weather grib files whilst talking to us and noted that it would be a very tactical race, but also highlighted the great expected spinnaker run from North Sails mark at the bottom of Barbuda to Nevis island, saying that the crew could hardly wait! Please see attached a photo of the crew sitting calmly on the stern of Hydrocarbon; something tells me they won’t look quite so relaxed when they get back!
The race is expected to last approx 4 days, so we should see them heading back for Falmouth Harbour, Antigua sometime on Thursday night/early Friday morning.
A text from the yacht just 10 minutes before the start gun said: “we are in the start area, 22 knots of breeze on the nose for the first 8 miles. Sun is shining. Nerves are kicking in for some. Hope we have enough sun cream!!”.
Latest news from the tracker show that Hydrocarbon Logic got a great start, and are at the front of the fleet amongst a group of 4 others. The yacht is racing in IRC 1 with 7 other yachts, notably a Farr 65 , Spirit of Minerva from Solent based charter company OnDeck and EH01, a Beneteau 47.7 from another local charter company, Global Yacht Racing.
However, the main rival in class is undoubtedly RORC Yacht-of-the-Year Tonnerre de Breskens, the outstanding race yacht of 2010 – Hydrocarbon will have to sail her best race ever to get ahead of this amazing race team.
Don’t forget to look at the tracker on the Caribbean 600 mini-site – here is the link again. http://caribbean600.rorc.org/2011-fleet-tracking.html
