I must admit, nothing crazy has been happening in Roadtown. I've been keeping the evenings pretty low key in order to have sufficient cash flow, and in order to keep off the "BVI Belly", at least for now. Chris is preparing his boat to be sold as he is leaving island in a couple months, so I was giving him a hand in running new halyards and what not. Not being too scared of heights, I was the one hoisted up to the top of the mast in a harnessed seat called a "Bosun's chair". After being grinded up to the masthead, I was slightly concerned for my safety as it appeared the mast head was starting to seperate from the mast itself. Yet, I proceeded to spend the next 2 hours at the top of that mast as we attemped to feed a wieghted line that was attached to the new halyard down through the mast. Needless to say after spending 2 hours jiggling, dangling, jerking, feeding and refeeding that line down the mast, we couldn't get it through.
We called it a night, and went about having some dinner, and devising a new plan to get the halyard through. Chris drew up a intricate and complex plan to feed this halyard, which I couldn't even begin to explain. So this morning, I was hoisted back to the top of that mast, and his plan went into action. And sure enough it worked quite successfully. I'm pretty stoked I don't have to go up that mast again, especially since it is a freestanding mast without spreaders or shrouds to climb or hang onto.
Since arriving down here, I have been following the proceedings leading up to the 33rd America's Cup Regatta. Now for those who don't know what the America's Cup is, it is basically the Holy Grail of sailing. It is the highest level of professional sailing, and a stupid amount of money is put into making these boats as fast as possible, and inventing new technologies to do so. Currently the America's Cup trophy is in the hands of the Swiss defender Alinghi, and BMW Oracle Racing from the USA is competing to win it back. Usually this race is sailed with monohull boats but for the first time, both teams are using multihulls. Alingi has a 90 foot catamaran, and BMW Oracle has a 100 foot trimaran. There has been a ton of legal battles involved with this cup, but I'll skip through that boring nonsense and get to the awesome part. After loosing their mast during a practise sail, BMW Oracle released their secret weapon which they had been designing and engineering for quite some time. They constructed the world's largest wing (bigger than the wing span of a 747) and stuck it vertically on their trimaran. It's a marvel of engineering and no sailboat before this, has ever looked so badass. Sailing Anarchy had this photo posted and it just looks unreal. I'm really looking forward to February when the regatta goes down.
On another note, this weekend is the BVI Sailing Team trials and we've been busy preparing for the regatta. Should be a great weekend of tight competition and racing. We're anticipating a pretty good turnout. I'll be sure to take some photos.
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