Good day all
Again sorry for the delay in writing more. But the last two days have been busy with getting the boat sorted and loaded for the trip back to the Med. It now appears that we are going to ship straight to Italy so I will not be going back to Palma at this point. It also means that I may be home a bit early.
As I sit here in my hotel room and start to think back about this experience here in Lanzarote I am still struck by the amount of work, effort and flat out cash the Calero family puts into this event! The closing nights dinner, show and party were totally unlike anything you will ever see in North America and quite frankly I have never seen it in Europe either. (I will have some pictures from Esa to show at some point).
Saturday was the last day of the event and we had quite a match race going with Better then... We finished both races just behind them which gave us the same points for the event but due to our two thirds on day 2 gave us the 5th place on the count back. It was some great sailing the last day but a couple big crew errors made it much closer then it actually was.
The Blue Nights team is starting to get better but we still lack a little bit of pace most of the time through the lower wind ranges. As soon as the #3 is used we are quite fast and can hold out own. But it is in the lighter breeze when we cannot hold a lane upwind that is causing our biggest issues. We are working on that and I think there are some new sails coming to help out that area.
Tea is working very hard at putting all the pieces together to have a competitive team on the water and to get the budget sorted out so that we have the right tools on the water as well. We still have a couple spaces in our quiver that need to be addressed but that is being handled as well.
This trip has been awesome for some other reasons. I now have some really good friends here in Europe. The Italian "skippers" have been great and I have become quite good mates with Ricardo from Talj the Swan 45. We have been all working together quite well to get the boats loaded, shipped and sorted out.
When I get back to the states, I want to put together a full proper report on this event. I truly believe that we need to get a good US contingent to look at coming here and sailing. The people are awesome, the sailing is awesome and it is half way home by ship anyway!
Cheers for now.
Tac
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