Short Bus, Full Moon and an Eagles Nest.

What … on earth is he taking? If you can’t make sense of it, keep on reading …

It’s been an eventful 24 hours and it does make sense, in a way! I was crewing on a boat called “Short Bus”. An Evelyn 26 stripped to the bone to save weight. Short Bus lined up for the New Jersey Coastal Race starting last Friday  near Rarity River Cutoff C”3″ – somewhere in NJ, not far from Manhattan for the folks not familiar with this likely not well known place.

Short Bus – “Evelyn 26”

After a struggle with Short Bus’ engine, we barely made in on time to the start line but passed it with flying colours. At 19:30 we started into a beautiful full moon night sail pushed to speed by the outgoing tide. Race distance around 65 nm. Anticipated finish 8-10 next morning. You wish!

With experienced skipper Matt, co skipper Vicky, the moon so bright and little to moderate winds, a safe journey.

WRITTEN permission needed to go over-board!

Reaching start, some spinnaker sailing and off we went. Our Evelyn the shortest boat in the fleet and the worst rating by far but we kept on pushing and were still close to the leading boats when the sun came up. Two boats aft of us. Yehaaa …

One of the most beautiful sunrises I’ve seen. I was at the helm at dawn, Manhattan’s largest building my fix point to keep course for the last 3.5 hours.

We reached Sandy Hook at high tide, overall pretty successful after calculated time. The larger boats already in the bay. We resorted to our anchor. No wind and the current turned against us. We’ve made a tough call to drop out of the race at this point. We’re at anchor just at the edge of a shipping channel with the tide pushing us towards a shoal. We would have been stuck there for at least 4 hours according to the forecast.

So what about the Eagle’s Nest? To honour our hard work, Vicky took us to an abandoned light house that was damaged by Hurricane Sandy. On top of it, an Eagle has build it’s nest but the kiddos are long gone. So we took a seat, treating our butts to some comfort 😉