2/1/07 --- Breezy, Bumpy and Wet.

The 2007 Ft. Lauderdale to Key West race proved to be a fantastic distance racing debut for the Lightspeed 32. We averaged 16 kts down the rhumb line to cover the160 nm course in 10:02:17, taking first in class and first in fleet. Along the way, we recorded a top speed of 24.6. I admit that we wanted a course record (and indeed broke the old one set by the Antrim 40 Zephyr in '05), but the 60 foot Stars & Stripes '88 set a new record -- 8 hours 32 minutes! Anyone who takes that monster designed for Southern California out in the Gulf Stream in South Florida in a hooting northeasterly deserves a record!

All the pieces came together for us. We got near-perfect conditions for the LIGHTSPEED (breezy and bumpy), we had had enough time in boat to break things and fix them so the boat was race-ready, and most importantly, we had a team who could push her hard safely: Randy Smyth and Paul (Whirly) Van Dyke as helmsmen, with Jan Majer, Stan Schreyer, and Hunt Stookey to pull strings and navigate. Randy and Whirly have both driven G-Class cats (Team Adventure and Playstation respectively) through the southern ocean, so the edge of the gulf stream and 80 degree water really did not phase them, and they kept us pushing all night.

The course is a long right hand turn, and the trick is to stay out of the Gulf Stream on the left and off the reef on the right. We started off Ft Lauderdale on a tight port screecher reach in low-20s breeze, and finished sailing our VMG angle on Starboard in high- 20s/low-30s with the big masthead A-sail. We had our best sustained speeds on the first stretch when we were sailing from 20-24 all the time and topped out at 24.6. It's just amazing to blast along hour after hour -- gets to seem almost routine.

Once we started turning right and went into VMG mode we had to switch to depth on the Tactick display so we would know when to jibe --so frankly we have no idea how fast we were going after that.But the big VMG kite with a 70% midgirth does not have the same top end as the smaller, flatter screacher, and we know we never improved on our max of 24.6 after that.

All in all, this was a great trial for the boat. We have sailed her a lot by now, but distance racing in these conditions is much tougher than going out for 3-4 hours testing in Newport. Overall we could not be happier. We did learn that our custom carbon hatches leak like a sieve (they look good though!), but we had already made the decision to use stock hatches going forward so this just reinforced that decision.We also had to slow down when an underspeced block blew out on the rudder downhaul, but we were back up to speed with the rudders lashed down after about 10 minutes of Stan hanging off the transoms with Randy and I holding on. Other than that, the boat was bulletproof!

I have to say that the guys at VPLP are brilliant. The long narrow bows have lots of reserve buoyancy forward, so when you stuff the bow into a wave (which we did all the time), the boat keeps going and the bows pop up. [See Picture] We didn't have to blow the A-sail to pop the bows up more than 3-4 times during the whole race. The other key is having the BIG rudders - so we could really push the boat and steer downwhenever we needed to. Actually the biggest stuff of the whole race was when we rolled the big sail at the Key West seabuoy and got hit by a puff just as Whirly was trying to head up. So it turns out to be pretty difficult to gauge how hard its blowing when you are sailing these boats downwind at 20+ in the dark! Who knew? Once the puff went by we had no problem and ripped down the channel to the finish close hauled at 13-16 kts.