Bermuda was another very Memorable stay, meeting lots of great people and gorgeous weather. I got a chance to run into Bermuda and check out some of the big catamarans practicing for the upcoming Americas cup, in hind site it would have been nice to stay another week to see some of the racing pretty cool. The set up for this event was really impressive and it was great to check out.
Well again its time to head for Nova Scotia, we have a iffy weather window that was calling for 40knots (in the right direction) about three days out. Again here is a quick synopsis of our trip. We left Bermuda and were immediately into some very windy conditions (25-30) and soon had a triple reef in the main. The wind stayed like this for about 24 hours and then began to build. Its difficult to estimate wind speed but looking at the sea state and all off the tops blowing off the waves we were experiencing 45-50 knots on the quarter and had 30' seas with some much bigger. I felt like I was skiing because every time we climbed to the top of a wave we were looking at a mountain range with the peaks getting blown off. I cant say I was scared but very concerned and hoping the boat would hold together the stresses on every thing were crazy. In order to counter steer down a wave you had to put your whole body into or risk getting wiped out. At this point we had about four feet of jib out with no main and that the way it stayed for about 48 hours. After a few days we got into some sunny weather but the wind was still up and we still just had the jib and were regularly hitting 10-12 knots of boat speed, quite a difference for the 1st leg where we were hitting 4.5 knots:). After getting though the gulf stream the weather settled to about 20 knots and we had good sailing albeit very, very cold. JIm and I were doing ten minutes shifts at the wheel any longer and our hands became too numb to steer.
Home at last, wow that was one for the books. Good to get Vagrant back home in one piece. As a post note the engine on Vagrant gave up the ghost a few weeks later. Glad it wasn't during the 1st leg when we were becalmed. And the crew are all still friend, nice.