This year’s kick off party got off to a spooky start, what with Halloween falling on the same night! The crews took the spirit of the night to heart and showed up in a multitude of interesting and creative costumes. Among our favorites were the couple of pumpkins (Jean Valois and Yolene Pouliot of “Caffe’ Latte). Their costumes featured orange balloons hilariously attached all over them that seemed to dance to their own tune as Jean and Yolene mingled about the room. Another great show of crew spirit and creativity was the “Boats” (Robert Ethier, Petra Urbanov of “Breeze On”). Each crew member had matching striped shirts and a large folded origami boat for a hat. There were many other fantastic costumes on display. Check out the pictures below for more of the great costumes of the night! Last nights fun was held at Griff's restaurant and hosted by Ocean Marine Yacht Center and the City of Portsmouth. During his welcoming remarks, tourism director for the city David Schulte had this to say about this history of portsmouth:
“During the revolutionary war shipbuilding was a cutting edge technology. Seeing the value in the town, the english decided not to burn Portsmith as they had Norfolk.” David said, “Because of this, we still have many of the original houses in Olde Towne that date from the 18th and 19th century."
Today we have the first full day of our 2016 seminar program. Andy Schell and David Hayes started off the morning talking about weather forecasting for the trip, contending with the gulfstream, and general heavy weather sailing questions and concerns. Next was in-depth look at SSB Radio systems and procedures presented by Jake Albano and Miles Poor. We then had a live call from the forecasters at Weather Routing Inc, who handle weather routing for the rally.
“Drier air coming down from the mid western United States is tending to squash any tropical activity. This is typical of what your see this time of year” Jeremy said. When talking about the long range outlook for the start on sunday, he had the following to say “Looking for mostly running conditions for Sunday, with winds around 25kts when entering the Gulf Stream. Then they will settle and shift toward the east.”
After the chat with WRI concluded, Miles held a diesel engine roundtable discussion with various tips and tricks on how to troubleshoot them at sea and the how to keep your diesel happy while out cruising. Concluding today’s program was a ladies roundtable hosted by Mia Karlsson, Isabelle Tremblay and Rachel Cumberland.
The fleet at Ocean Marine Yacht Center is enjoying near perfect preparation weather with temperatures hovering around 60 degrees fahrenheit and a slight northeast breeze. With nearly all the boats checked in and a majority of the safety inspections taken care of, the rally prep is progressing smoothly toward our sunday start!