Well it’s been quite a month since my last post. In early September I was hit by two Category 5 hurricanes at my home in the Virgin Islands. Pretty scary when you have 150-200mph winds and you’re hoping the house you built can withstand it all. My home held up great, but someone else’s roof hit me in the peak of the storm and blasted a hole in my roof. Well at least we had plenty of spare roof tin lying around to patch my roof with when it was all over!! But quite an experience, especially the aftermath when you are on a small island that is totally devastated. It becomes basic survival living, with no power for months, uncertain fuel and food supplies, neighbors all chipping in and helping each other, lots and lots of hard work, and learning how to get by with very little. But this is all a part of living in paradise, and hopefully we will come back smarter and stronger in the end.
With our airport wiped out, I now had a slight issue with getting to my next event in Spain nine days later! Eventually I went by boat to Puerto Rico that had a functioning airport (at the time) and made it to Spain only one day late for training.
This was our final regatta of the 52 Super Series on Provezza and we were laying in 4th for the season, with a big gap in front of us to 3rd, but only a small gap behind with several teams chasing us. The regatta was in Mahon on the island of Menorca, which is my new favorite place in Europe, but the conditions this late in the year can be quite unstable. We had great winds for our training days, but very tricky and unstable conditions for most of the regatta, making the tactics very difficult. We sailed a pretty good regatta, had our fair share of bad luck, finished 6th, but took care of our #1 priority of beating our closest rivals in order to hang on to our 4th position for the season. This is the best ever result for our team in the 52 Super Series, so we are pleased with the final outcome, and the upward trend in our performance.
So a very enjoyable and successful race season in 2017, and many exciting projects to look forward to in 2018.