Day 4 – The End is Near.. or Is It

So as we creep into what is supposed to be our last day, one of the weather forecast models shows that we are going to loose a lot of wind and not get in until Thursday, midday which means I am going to miss my flight and my hotel is booked on the wrong day. So I of course jump on my phone and change my flight to Thursday evening and shift my hotel back a day. 12 hours later the models change again and I realize that I was just too tired to remember that weather systems are some of the most non-linear systems on the planet and I should have waited for a second confirmation before making changes.

Fortunately for me, I’m a superstar with both Delta and Marriott so changing the flights back was a $0 affair and all was able to be done on my phone without anyone knowing.

But then the storm scare came. ALERT ALERT ALERT out of Duluth, MN.. storm has been seen over Bayuk traveling east at 30mph generating 1 inch hail and over 60mph wind gusts.

Well this put the boat into a tizzy… people running to and fro and honestly a little disorganized. The good thing however turned out to be that the storm gods (Thanks Grandma!) split the storm directly around us… half of it going north of us the other half going south. I guess I’ve been living right lately!

So after the storm panic, we hit crazy calm and shifty winds. We literally almost did a 360 turn at one point trying to fill the sails. But then things filled in, we jybed out into the lake and we have been cruising a solid 8knts ever since. Current ETA to finish is 10:22pm CST. We’re gong to “bang the corner” in sailors parlance as the boats inside us closer to shore have been struggling to keep good breeze so the decision was to not tempt fate and stay with the wind we had.

Finishing, well, I have a lot of mixed feelings for a lot of mixed reasons. But overall, a wonderful experience that I would probably never had the chance to experience. It was a bucket list race for me so that was good. The rest, well that comes with being cooped up with 6 other people you met 10 minutes before the boat left the dock. Good and some not so good.

But sincere thanks to Sam Medwid and his father for allowing me to be a part of their team and this race.