Tango 2 Day 10: On The Helm Practicing Our Race Techniques
written by Tango mate, Zosha Wiktor
July 18, 2017
Today, we woke up at Trellis Bay after a night of light rain showers. We quickly ate breakfast and prepared our boat for Race Day! We raced with the alpha fleet from Trellis to Mountain Point on Virgin Gorda. Being the only catamaran in the race was a little tricky, however we decided to challenge ourselves to break our speed records and get a lot of people on the helm practicing our race techniques.
The race was a fantastic sail. We tacked beautifully, raced around a rain storm and broke our speed record! When we arrived at Mountain Point, we laid our anchor quickly and had a flawless anchor setting- an accomplishment in itself. We might have been last in the race but we won the catamaran race so that’s all that really matters. We had a victory jump off our boat and started to prepare lunch. Over lunch, we debriefed the race and talked about our strengths and areas of improvement.
When lunch was over, we got our snorkel gear ready to snorkel the Kodiak Queen at Mountain Point. The Kodiak Queen is a ship that survived the bombing of Pearl Harbor and later bought by Sir Richard Branson. A couple of months ago, the Kodiak Queen was sunk as an art installation and artificial reef off of Mountain Point. Artists attached a massive Kraken off the bow of the ship and local communities painted the boat with messages and good wishes. The Kodiak Queen is very easy to snorkel because it is not too deep and there are lots of fish hanging out by it already. We are excited to come back and see her in a couple of years after time has passed for marine growth!
After the snorkel, we brought up our anchor and motored around the corner to Saba Rock. The wind was really strong however the Tangos performed a perfect mooring ball pick up and secured us for the night. We quickly jumped in the ocean again to beat the heat and get out some of our everlasting energy.
At night after dinner, we headed to the restaurant at Saba Rock for an onshore social with the Alpha fleet. There, we bought desserts, frozen drinks and checked out the gift shop. Shortly after the social, we headed straight to bed exhausted after another long full day in the Caribbean.
