IT has been blowing 30 to 40-plus knots all night, and we can finally see the sea state at first light. It was a wild night bombing down massive waves in the pitch-black under a full main and a heavy-air running spinnaker. Without instruments, our only guides were a flashlight taped to the backstay, so we could barely make out a masthead fly and the dim glow of the running lights. I vividly remember passing waves at such a velocity that we flew off the front of one wave and slammed violently into the back the next. This happened two or three times in succession.
An hour before the sunrise, the boom broke. We thought that the competitive part of the race was over for us, so we took the…
You're reading a preview of
Sailing World (Digital) - 1 Issue, Winter 2025