Scarlet Oyster - last 100miles!

Hi all,Looks like we will be into the top of St. Lucia on this stb gybe, whichmakes life simple, having a great last days run in perfect conditions20knots and 155deg TWA, even the waves are being easy to read!What an adventure this race has been! Completely different to last year,from the wind conditions to breakages that nearly ended our race it has beenquite a roller coaster!My team on board have really worked hard together to face and overcome thechallenges presented to us.The first 36hrs of punishing upwind work was probably quite a shock to myteam who had seen brochure shots of blue skies and downwind sailing surfingdown a rolling Atlantic swell! The boat coped well, and I was happy withour route which got us the right side of most the shifts yet kept us out ofthe worst of the. read more...

Scarlet Oyster - Scarlet Oyster Blog Nearly there!

Hi All,Much nicer nights sailing than the previous one, which to be honest was not hard, bit less wind than wanted, but I guess better than too much when we just need to keep everything intact and get to the finish.We have been hanging in there with the Quokka, they are playing angles and shifts where we are on the 170 deg highway on stb all the way, bit different to last year when we were gybing 5 times most nights! It is interesting that both strategies are yielding almost identical VMGs, this is good news for us as with a slightly lower handicap every sched we match their pace we actually gain a bit on handicap, and with the runway fast running out they have an increasingly harder target speed to match to stay in contention.We have a lead now of about 1%, which does not sound a lot,. read more...

Scarlet Oyster - Nice sailing in the mythical trades!

Hi All,Just been having some good sailing conditions, touch wood, boat behavingwell. Last night was a little dark at times with some cloud, but seems ourspeeds have been pretty good. Several surfs to 16.1kn, exciting stuff.By our calculations we have slipped back to 1st in class b, hopefully we canstay there this time!The thai green prawn curry was a little hot last night, but so far there hasnot been a big queue for the heads so we may have got away with it!The fishing is not really working out so we will need to go for a sushidinner on arrival.Need to get back to the sunbathing, so will sign off.380 dtg, so may be in before light on Mon.CheersRoss. read more...

Scarlet Oyster - The drag race commences!

Hi All,We finally seemed to extract ourselves from the light wind zone by about 2100UT, after a tense day working really hard to keep moving, the weather files suggested that we had to get to the wind rather than it come to us, so it was important to gain every bit of boatspeed we could through the light stuff.By our calculations we came out the hole about 1% behind Quokka 8 on handicap, we have a more southerly position which means she will have to spend more time on the less favoured port gybe to get to the finish line, wealso have the benefit of more runway before the finish to better our average speed for the trip. One thing is for sure no one will be giving up easily!The Sigma Persephone, and our friends on the Swan 44 Selene are also well in the hunt and are currently only a. read more...

Scarlet Oyster - Lying Grib files!

Hi All,Been a few days since I found time to write anything, anything I wrote yesterday would have sounded a bit negative with being stuck in a wind hole!I seemed to have developed a knack for seeking out windless areas, this is not a talent I am too proud of to be honest, could be useful for a spot of mid atlantic wakeboarding perhaps but is not too handy in a yacht race!We got a little stuck for 6hrs a few days ago, having given a windless area a wider berth than others around us, they carried on we parked!Had a night of biblical rain, at times the cockpit drains were struggling so we had a mini foot spar, these drains can clear the cockpit in a couple of mins when we fill it with a big wave, so, the rain was pretty hard! (though moving some of the debris and spare lines that had. read more...