Straight From The Horse’s Mouth

Report from the Bow of Genuine Risk in the 2011 Jamaica Race

It was a great race. Not much wind for us but that’s what the boat likes. At the start it was between 12 and 15 kts reaching. The very narrow GR had a hard time keeping up with the more beamy powerful boats like Beau Geste and Rambler 100 (who managed to put 65 miles on us in two days).

That night the wind went light and forward. For the next day and a half we were switching between the jib top and medium jib until we inched around Cuba, set the big kite and really started making gains.

Around Noon on day four we saw Rambler way off in the distance on the opposite jibe. They crossed fifty yards in front and jibed to leeward. For the next 30 minutes we had a bit of a line up, and were able to sail over the top of them and come down to their line. 8 kts of breeze helped that. The wind picked up for the last 10 or 15 miles of the race and Rambler took off again. In the end, we crossed the finish line 25 minutes behind Rambler 100.

We owe a lot to our navigator Peter Tans, who did a great job of always keeping us moving, never dropping under 8 kts of boat speed. The rest of the crew is awesome as well. We have a mix of Swedish, Kiwi, British, and American guys. Everyone on the boat worked very well together, which seems to be a good start to having a strong team.