Mary “Bushy” Bushnell Pearce Henry, 102, of Middletown, RI, passed away on December 24, 2022, in the St. Clare Home in Newport. She was the wife of the late Eugene Baker Henry, USN, Ret.

Bushy was remarkable not only for her age but for her generation. As she reminded us all often, “Do you realize I was born the year after women got the vote! Can you imagine what I have seen?” It was a rhetorical question.

Bushy was a long-time member of the New York Yacht Club. Her love of boats and the America’s Cup was only exceeded by her ability to bring people together around the dinner table or on the terrace. She was endlessly generous with her time and her hospitality was legendary…

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With the line honors and major handicap positions now almost certainly settled, it’s time to give some attention to a segment of the 2022 Sydney-Hobart fleet that’s largely been overlooked by the media – the two-handers.

Last year they were the center of controversy when the Cruising Yacht Club ruled that they could compete as a separate division but not be eligible for the overall prizes in IRC and ORCi. Since then the club has changed its mind. The two-handers now sail for the main trophies, plus in their own handicap divisions.

So how are they faring? Well, the fear of many traditional offshore racers that they would outperform equivalent conventional yachts seems to be unfounded. The popular wisdom was that smaller, lightweight flyers such as the Sunfast 3300 and J/99 would race at impressive levels alongside their fully crewed rivals, especially with the wind on, or behind, the beam.

That hasn’t happened. Many have sailed well, but they were never a podium threat to the larger, well-funded and professionally crewed boats. The first six places on IRC – the overall winning category – are now filled by TP52s in a remarkable display of their dominance.

The best-performed two-hander on scratch so far is Ocean Crusader J-Bird, a restored TP52 currently in 35th place. On IRC the Lombard 34 Mistral is lying in 26th with Sun Fast Racing 32nd. The J/99 Rum Rebellion (above) is always well prepared and sailed but appears to have struggled over the 628nm distance. She is currently down in 56th place on IRC…

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The start of the race will be broadcast live on the official race website for viewers around the world.

Race details – Notice of Race – Facebook

The Environment

Spanish renewables developer Avangrid has announced that it is seeking to walk away from the current contracts for the Commonwealth Wind project planned for Massachusetts, saying that after months of negotiations the project is not economically viable in its current form. After two months of back and forth with the state and regulators, the company made a filing on December 16 proposing that the project be rebid in a competitive solicitation scheduled for April 2023.

“Despite unprecedented challenges in the global economy in the form of supply chain disruptions, historic levels of inflation, and rising interest rates, Avangrid has engaged in good-faith and productive discussions with Massachusetts state officials regarding these challenges and the need to restore the project to economic viability,” the company wrote in its public statement. “To advance this project as expeditiously as possible, Avangrid filed a motion with the DPU (Department of Public Utilities) to dismiss its review of the Commonwealth Wind contracts, which will allow all parties an opportunity to pursue an expedient path forward.” Read on.

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It’s been a long five years since the conclusion of the 2018 Volvo Ocean Race, and a lot more than the event’s name has changed. Here’s everything you need to know about this season’s premier ocean race before it kicks off on January 8.

The Route

Throughout every iteration of this event since 1973, The Ocean Race’s route has followed the same basic parameters: a circuit of the globe starting and finishing in Europe with stopovers scattered throughout. However, the route itself changes for every edition, and the stopover ports vary. This year, Alicante, Spain; Cabo Verde; Cape Town, South Africa; Itajaí, Brazil; Newport, Rhode Island; Aarhus, Denmark; The Hague, Netherlands; and Genova, Italy, are scheduled to host, and a “fly-by” in Kiel, Germany, creates an additional opportunity for fans to see the boats in race-mode while underway.

A discerning eye will note that this route is somewhat of a deviation from the typical Volvo Ocean Race routes of the past decade, which incorporated the Indian Ocean via stopovers in the Middle East, India, and Asia. It’s not clear whether this decision stems from a lack of willing host cities in the region, or the race organizer’s reluctance to put sailors back in waters that proved problematic in recent editions—including a fatal nighttime collision with a fishing vessel, the marooning of one team on a reef, and one memorable leg cancellation during which the boats had to be shipped from one port to the next due to piracy concerns. Instead, the teams will face off against a monstrous Southern Ocean leg, bypassing Oceania and stretching three-quarters of the way around the globe, south of the five Great Capes and through some of the planet’s most treacherous waters.

The Boats

The Ocean Race’s primary class is now the IMOCA 60, a box-rule class that’s been in production since the early ’90s, primarily used for elite shorthanded ocean racing such as in the Vendée Globe. According to 11th Hour Racing Team CEO Mark Towill, this means that sailors will have to be more in tune with their boats than ever. “When all the boats were identical, you pushed the boat as hard as you could. But with different designs in the race, you need to be more aware of your own boat’s limitations and strengths,” he says.

This approach has pros and cons—on one hand, winning a race in the design office doesn’t make for exciting spectating; on the other, different strengths call for more strategic racing—not to mention the introduction of technological innovations like foils. The IMOCA 60s will sail with five crew on board, including one on-board reporter and at least one female crew member. Since the 2018 edition, the race has mandated that every team include female sailors.

For the past few editions, the Volvo Ocean Race has been sailed in VO65s, a one-design class with a race-operated boatyard maintaining all the hulls, hardware, and sails to identical standards. Though VO65s will still race in the 2023 edition, they will be used as a training class, with all boats required to have at least three of their 10 crew members (plus an on-board reporter) be under 30 years old. The VO65 teams will also have at least three women as part of their crew and be allowed one additional crew member for the Southern Ocean leg.

Another interesting addition for this fleet is the VO65 Sprint Cup, which will add VO65 teams not competing in the full round-the-world race to some of the shorter legs and in-port series. Presumably, this has been done to provide more opportunities for underfunded teams and rookie sailors to get experience. But given how exhausted Volvo Ocean Race sailors typically are when they arrive at stopovers, it’s hard to say whether experienced teams will have the upper hand on these green short-course teams or not…

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We don’t know the science behind that transom (if there is any), but we both love it and hate it.  That ass may not age very well, but the boat looks pretty damn cool. More here.

Title inspiration thanks to the Happy Mondays.

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At the start of last week, the Vallarta Yacht Club, in Nuevo Vallarta, Mexico, hosted their annual Banderas Bay Blast — a three-day event that includes the Pirates for Pupils Spinnaker Run for Charity. It was on this third day that Baja Ha-Ha Grand Poobah and Latitude 38 founder Richard Spindler experienced what he thought could very well have been his worst-ever day of sailing.

My worst day in 55 years of sailing? I think so. And it was supposed to be such a great day, with us on Profligate going up against Fred and Judy’s all-conquering Serendipity 43 Wings, Randy and Sally-Christine’s Wylie 65 Convergence, and about 20 other boats. To add insult to injury, the event was the Pirates for Pupils Spinnaker Run for Charity from Punta Mita to Paradise Marina, an event I started and have done countless times. It’s always a downwind sail in which, unlike the light-air upwind races, Profligate can shine.

The morning started great, with the very young local kids putting on a dance performance for members of the fleet. Doña was in heaven, dancing and hugging all the little kids. But she wouldn’t be in heaven for long. As I motored Profligate upwind to raise the main, we were getting closer to the shore by the Punta Mita restaurants. We were having some issues with the lazy jacks, which meant it was taking longer to get the main up, which meant we kept getting closer to shore. But I know the area well, and judged that we were still in deep enough water. My judgment was proven wrong as Profligate slammed to an abrupt halt from about five knots when the starboard daggerboard crunched into one of the big rocks that are scattered around the otherwise sand bottom.

While Profligate came to a complete stop, the 11 crewmembers didn’t. Some were tossed into bulkheads or knocked off their feet. But Doña, who had been leaning on the seagull striker, suffered the most. When Profligate stopped, she kept right on going. Right off the front of the boat. It wasn’t the most enjoyable swim of her life, as the current was pretty strong and she’s not the strongest swimmer. She never did get far from Profligate, still grinding her daggerboard on the rock, but it was easiest for a panga to fish her out of the water.

Over the years we’ve seen a lot of very large “boat bites” during boat-bite contests in the Baja Ha-Ha. But when we got back to the condo that night, we discovered that Doña had the biggest boat bite we’ve ever seen. It’s a wicked-looking hematoma about the size of Rhode Island, right on her bum. And it was swollen.

Striking the rock, and Doña’s going overboard, weren’t the end of our troubles. I’d invested a small fortune in some upgraded halyards and sheet stoppers that are a little bit different from the ones we had before. They are still a little confusing, too, so — and I still don’t know quite how — after we had the spinnaker up for a few minutes the spinny halyard slipped about 35 feet. We were shrimping! We tried to hoist the spinnaker back up, but that merely succeeded in getting the chute caught under both sides of the starboard hull. Merde! Not only was it the end of that old chute’s life, it took a lot of work on the part of the crew to retrieve it. Ultimately we got another chute up and had some decent sailing, but by this time Fred and Judy, and Randy and Sally-Christine, were so far ahead we couldn’t have seen them with the Hubble telescope. So we headed for the barn. Mind you, hitting the rock, Doña’s going overboard, and shrimping the chute were only the highlights of a day when pretty much everything that could go wrong did go wrong. Even the autopilot decided to stop working. Merde! Merde! Merde!

When Doña was in the water, she was surrounded by bits of foam and fiberglass, the source of which could only be the bottom of Profligate‘s starboard daggerboard, now firmly embedded in the crash box. It’s likely going to need a haulout to get that daggerboard out, although we’ll try other methods.

Hopefully it will be another 50 years before we have another day of sailing so awful. Now that I think of it, yesterday was probably my second-worst day sailing. The worst was in the early ’70s when I was about 21.

We’ll save this second story for later in the week… Stay tuned!

The post Was This My Worst Day in 55 Years of Sailing? appeared first on Latitude38.

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The 2022-23 Globe40 is an eight-leg doublehanded round the world race in Class40s. Seven teams were at the beginning on June 26, with five teams having started the fifth leg on November 26 from Papeete, Tahiti to Ushuaia, Argentina.

(December 16, 2022) – At 20H54 hours UTC, the Franco-Japanese crew of MILAI Around The World was first across the leg 5 finish line at the entrance to the Beagle Channel, which leads to the Argentinean town of Ushuaia. Hours earlier, Masa Suzuki and Estelle Greck were also first to reach the legendary Cape Horn at 09:36 UTC, where wind conditions were very calm.

MILAI utterly dominated the last two weeks of this 4,500-mile leg, with a long stretch of downwind sailing in an established breeze, punctuated by a series of low-pressure systems.

Over the coming hours, it will likely be confirmed that the current ranking will earn MILAI second place in the overall ranking, with SEC HAYAI set to remain at the top of the leader board just one-point ahead. As a result, there is still everything to play for in the next few legs as the fleet climb back up the Atlantic.

The 4682 miles covered by MILAI in this latest leg required a sea passage of 19 days and 19 hours at an average speed of 9.84 knots. Setting sail from Papeete, the competitors initially had to contend with a week of light to medium winds as they dropped due south in search of the strong west winds reminiscent of the lower latitudes. Over the course of that first week, the hierarchy was constantly shifting according to the tactics in play, everyone alternating between first and last place…

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