BVI

We have been down here for some time now. Since the end of the Rolex just hanging out working on the boat and doing some cool cruising. Here are some of the best shots from the last few week. Topher Kristen Matt and Erica arrive today so there should be some more to come before we head to Bermuda on the 26th!

I found this Conk right outside the Bitter End right where Jeremy told me to look!

When i took this picture Pete was giving me a hard time because he is also so rich with sunsets documenting them has gotten old. Its a tough life.

Aboard the nerve center of the Gravatron at the Easter festival!

There's O'Malley looking at the fish

Pete there is'nt a girl or a shark behind me.

Sweet hair!

Its been a while.

Hey! I know its been a while but lots has happened and I think its time to fill you all in. When I left you after the second Atlantic crossing I also left Barra to my mother and father in Antigua. I went skiing. They spent some time cruising in Antigua and then headed north with the Marshall's and Prescotts to Simpson Bay in St Marten. After twelve powder days at Mad River and Sugarloaf and a short trip to London to see Charlotte I returned to the boat in St Marten with Mike Berg. There he and I hauled her out and went to work putting a fast racing bottom on her. After about five days she was feeling pretty smooth and we were pretty red. But all in all it came out great! While in St Marten we raced in the St Marten Heineken Regatta with Jim Taylor, RJ Bouchard, Kirsten Barton, Mike Berg, John White, Tom Reed, Bill Shenton, Bobby Martin, Bruce MacNeil, Chase Marshal. It was a wonderful crew and even with only one day of practice we went out to the Commodores Cup on Thursday morning feeling confident and at the very least excited. With a schedule of two mile windward leewards we were a little scared that this wasn't Barra's expertise but we worked hard and with a lot of luck pulled off a third place overall behind two well sailed boats Lazy Dog and Mad IV. Going into the Heineken regatta itself we were very nervous now. But we came out on the first day into 30kts of wind and big northerly swell and aside from a late call for a peel to the three (from yours truly) we did well! On the run down the east side of the island we did blow out both of our kites but at least it made for good spectating. If anyone has the video of our second blow out i would love to see it.

If you look closely you can see the bag for the three on the foredeck in that wave. John is behind the jib somewhere trying to finish the peel!

Saturday was rescheduled to be windward leewards and a little squeamish with a our kites in the big air we sailed tuff second day. Determined to improve on the final day of the event we came out and sailed a flawless final race up the same run where we had blown out our kites. After an exciting beat crossing tacks with five boats Avocation and Lazy Dog the most we pulled of a nice bare away set and the top mark and started the run for what we hoped would be more successful. All in all we had a great run and nice jib reach to the finish to take third overall. That night we celebrated with our favorite pizza and Damian Marley and the Whalen Whalers played till two or three!

Thanks to John white Chase Marshall and Mike Berg who stayed around after the regatta to help me with getting the boat back into cruising for so that seven of us could sail up to the BVI and hangout for the week. Ian Mitchel, Andrew Dunlop, Mike Berg, John White, Kelly Thomas and all left St Marten and headed for a week of cruising in the BVI. We had a wonderful crossing in 20+kts with only the jib up we were at the baths just after sunup! Many wonderful times where had by all! When the good times came to a slow end John and I started getting the boat ready for our second regatta. This time based of of Nanny Cay in the BVI Jeremy Small came down a few days early to help get the boat emptied out and race sails fitted. Jeremy was the brains behind a boom vang trim that was only a little nerve racking within a day of our big event the Rolex International Regatta held at the St Thomas Yacht Club.

For this even we had a different but also awesome crew. John stayed on the bow but had a new mast man in Jeremy, Neal and Fernando were our pit guys, Brian trimmed the kite I trimmed main and Brigham trimmed jib, Mike and my father both drove on different days, Richard was not only our mid bow and sewer guy but also a great navigator backing up Jack Slattery on tactics.

The first race of the event was a short but tight course around an island and through a few very tight passages. This turned out to be our worst score as an 8th. After that we really picked it up and on the second day of the regatta put of two bullets! We were leading into the last day and it was all up to us. The courses maybe didn't favor us so much but truth be told we could have sailed better on the last day. The J122 Lost Horizon that beat us deserved the win but watch out next year we will be after them. Memorable moments from this event came thick and juicy! One included a super tight spinnaker reach on a lee shore where we could not bare away to dose the spinnaker in trying to blow the halyard we lost the sheets and tack and quickly had a straight eighty foot flag off the top of our mast. the only way to solve the problem was to let it all go! The kite the halyard and the sheets all flew off the top of the mast and into water. Thank you to the nice man in the rib who retrieved our spinnaker and running gear and returned it to the yacht club.

Barra now has some scratches in her and has seen the race course. We hope to continue this trend this summer with some good racing in Newport and hopefully we can keep the good scores coming! Thanks so much to all the people involved in these two events and all the help we have received from folks this winter. Mike Berg did and amazing job as our shore logistics manager at the Heineken. My mother took over the task at the Rolex and made some amazing meals. John White whom i met on the dock in St Marten has helped me so much i cant even explain without him non of this would have been possible. Jeremy Small was a huge help during the Rolex keeping the boat up to speed. Every team member was incredibly important and I thank you all so much! The pic below was taken after one of the events and I think my dad kinda likes this buoy racing thing now! Without him obviously this never would have been possible.

The Crossing

While in Lagos Chase and Eric where using the tender for exploration. Without a proper dingy anchor chance found the next best thing: Barra's Fortress. Which he now has a growing love for.



Ken McKinley our weather router from Locust Weather has done an excellent job routing us across the ocean twice and through numerous coastal passages. On day four or five his email described squally weather for the next few days. This is one of the twenty or thirty squals that we encountered ranging from a dark cloud that didnt change wind or weather to 41kts and stinging rain.
Eric and Jermemy enjoy one of the tropcal showers on the back bench.

After six days of nice wind and the spinnaker we sailed into a trough. With the breeze slowly dying and the sea state a little lumpy made waiting for wind a little painfull.

Even though the crew of Barra over the last few months has spent all their extra cash on food and plane tickets we are very rich in sunsets!

Bobby Martin enjoyed some of the trip. I think?

Another wonderful sunset with the 2A up.


Nice broom.


The southern crossing is completely different from the northern crossing. We not only enjoyed three Mahi-Mahi and five tuna but also standard clothing and night watch gear consisted of shorts and maybe a T shirt.

Madeira and Porto Santo

Lagos

Barra Goes Abroad

Chase and I just got back from a weekend trip to Seville and Gibraltar. Seville had tons of exquisite tile work, and at one government building they had a series of tiled alcoves with benches in them representing most of the cities in Spain.

The Cathedral in Seville was massive, but we didn't get a chance to go inside, since the ticket lady wouldn't buy Chase's story that he had forgotten his student ID, so we just got to admire the exterior.

The next morning we caught a bus to La Linea, the Spanish town that's just over the border from Gibraltar. The Spanish countryside along the way was covered with windmills and orange trees, most of which weren't yet ripe. We had a lengthy debate at a bus station about what type of citrus fruit was growing on the trees, finally deciding that they were unripe oranges.

As we came around the last bend in the road and started descending toward Algeciras and Gibraltar, the rock came into view - it's pretty spectacular. The land all around it is super flat, ande then Gibraltar just rears up out of the sea.

We stayed at a hostel just across the street from Casemate's square, the landward terminus of main street. It wasn't nearly as ritzy as the hostel in Seville, but at least we got 2 pieces of toast with butter and tea for breakfast. We spent our first day in Gibraltar hiking the Rock. It's very steep, so even though it's not all that high, it takes a while to get up and down.

From the top of the Rock we could see Africa across the straits of Gibraltar, but it was a hazy day so we could just barely make out the shape of the mountains.

The Barbary Macacques on the rock are very used to human presence, and didn't seem to even take notice of us. They treated passing cars more as playground equipment than a threat.

Gibraltar itself was a strange mix of Spanish and English cultures - the police, phone booths, and signage was straight out of England, but almost everyone spoke both English and Spanish, and we heard people mixing the two a lot.

Gibraltar seemed to have almost an island atmosphere, despite the fact that the border was pretty low key. It definitely lived up to our expectations.

Lagos

We're now in Lagos, Portugal. We hauled out last Wednesday and got the bottom painted, now we're back in the water at the Lagos Marina while Stu goes home for a few days. Lagos seems to be almost entirely populated by the British. The marina is full of liveaboards who are either wintering here or just live here, and the town's many bars are full of holidaymakers, even this late in the season.

We had a long, mostly uneventful motor (a brief episode with water pump belts notwithstanding) to Lagos from Porto, in wind speeds ranging from 0 to 0. We did pass the Russian sail training vessel Mir, powering the other direction in the lack of wind with her staysails set.

Leixoes, the marina for Porto, was weirdly hazy. The region is known for fog, but it was unlike any fog we'd seen before - low, hot, and clinging to the ground. Walking along the beach boardwalk from the harbor to the grocery store, we soon lost sight of the jetty walls in the haze.

To follow our journey, take a look at our GPS tracker at this website: http://charthorizon.com/m/cz/map?vessels=Barra&history=Bermuda_-_Ireland&v_scope=all