2017 Bermuda 1-2 – a coming home

Happy New Year!

Another year, another adventure for Spadefoot and crew. Time to put plans to paper. The West Coast doesn’t have a monopoly on cool ocean races in the US. Spadefoot is easily trailerable, so we aren’t limited to sailing on only one coast. Possibly the most popular ocean race over the years has been Newport to Bermuda on the East Coast. A roughly 650nm jaunt from Rhode Island, across the Gulf Stream to the island oasis of Bermuda. Newport to Bermuda is held every two years on even years, but there is another race along the same route on odd years. Bermuda 1-2. This race has a few excellent twists to the ordinary idea of sailing with a large crew from one point to another. B1-2, as the name suggests is a single-handed race from Newport to Bermuda and then a double-handed race back from Bermuda to Newport. What an excellent way to test the crew and the boat!

Bermuda 1-2 starts on June 2nd. The return leg starts on June 15th. That should give us roughly a week of tourist time in Bermuda, which coincidentally is where Chris was born (that’s the homecoming part, if you were wondering). She hasn’t been back since she was a baby, so we are both really excited to spend some time exploring (by scooter of course) her birthplace.

June 2nd is less than 5 months away. That means preparations are in full swing. Fortunately, since we raced Spadefoot to Hawaii last summer, a lot of the preparation is already done. Most of the prep now circles around adding a new (second) autopilot and testing both to make sure they are ready for anything. The other major hoop to jump through is that Justin must do a 100nm singlehanded trip offshore as a qualifier for the singlehanded leg. We’ll be watching the weather offshore from Galveston Bay in late March and early April to pick a good date for that.

Registration for B1-2 just opened on January 1st and there are already 10 entrants including two 21 foot Mini’s, so Spadefoot won’t be the smallest boat in the race. With luck we’ll have 30 or so other boats to race with come June.

Since repainting the bottom, racing to Hawaii, and removing the inboard engine Spadefoot has been moving really well. We are super pleased with our recent race results, even after our rating was adjusted from 108 to 102. Definitely a good sign.

2 comments