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by Peter Becker
Last spring, I sailed an amazing race called the Bermuda 1-2. The first leg to Bermuda is sailed single-handed followed by a double-handed return to Newport. The solo offshore part was particularly rewarding and a great awakening to the joys of solo sailing.
Short-handed sailing is so much fun that with the help of the New York Yacht Club, the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club, and the Cruising Club of America, we started a new race, the Bermuda Short-Handed Return, a single- and double-handed race back to Newport shortly after the Newport Bermuda Race.
Now for the first time, hard-charging short-handed sailors can race to and from Bermuda every year!
The Young American Sailing Academy has two J/105s that are constantly being upgraded and modified for short-handed offshore sailing. I’ve done a lot of sea miles, but I never expected that among the many lessons learned, the one that stood out the most was the importance of battery management and the importance of effective charging.
The power consumption adds up when running the autopilot, laptop, and electronics. Unfortunately, the boats are not configured with amp meters, so, it is hard to know exactly how many amp-hours of power is used per day, but what I do know is that we ran the engine four times a day for two hours each time…
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