39i Perfor entered in Longest Fresh Water Race!

[Black Diamond]

Black Diamond is a 39i Performance 2008, with Asym Spin, and we are entered in the Lake Ontario 300, The longest Fresh Water race in the world. And, yes it is longer than the Mackinac, in Michigan, but not as famous, because its run by us Canadians. Plus it's more challenging, since it's not a straight point to point race. Its a 308 nautical mile race around the lake a full circumnavigation.

The race starts Saturday 10:30AM North American Eastern Time, and we should finish 3 days later. The winds are expected to be very light, in this inland lake race.

If you are interested in following this Jeanneau boat as it competes with the rest of the fleet, I am keeping a blog, I will be blogging every 6 hours or so during the late, live from the boat. There is also live race tracking, so you can track the boats and the boats in our fleet.

For more information on the race, tracking and roster go to www.lo300.org,

For my live blog, and links to race tracking go to www.radonic.wordpress.com

P.S. Please keep in mind, I have only been sailing for 4 years, and I have a beginner crew, our results may not be an indicator as to how well the boat performs.

Thanks

[Don Reaves]

I was listening to the radio yesterday on Lake Ontario and heard that one of the boats was missing. Was contact restored? Are they OK?

Did you have fun? There were some very strong winds in our area during the race. I suppose you encountered them too.

Don Reaves

[MartyB]

Don,

He is still a day from finishing. Altho doing pretty well by the tracker.

Marty

[MartyB]

Near as I can tell, BD is finished by 11 pm his time tonight, or VERY close to the finish.

The boat missing was a C&C 30, that does not have a tracking system, and had not mad the mandatory 6 hr radio call ins! So the CG was called out finally. From a blog on the site, Canadian CG were at the skips meeting too! Sounds like US and Canadian CG's work closely together with the YC that puts this on to make sure folks are ok. Only in this case, to have a skip screw things up!

Then the three SF3200's doing the Chicago-Mac race seem to be doing ok, altho a bit farther behind the rest of the class than I thought they should be.........but speeds last night were in the .2-1 knot range for most of the boats! Even the 70' sleds were barely doing in the 1-3 range!

[Black Diamond]

Black Diamond finish 1 minute before midnight on July 20th. We would have finished 3 hours earlier had we not ripped our spinnaker. For more details and latest photos go to the blog www.radonic.wordpress.com

Thanks for following along....Ed s/v Black Diamond

[Black Diamond]

Yes, WE did encounter those winds....15 to 22 knots. Our top speed was 10.5 knots, cruising steady at 8 to 9.5 knots on the first leg, Sailing the asym spinnaker at about 110 to 130 degrees to the wind. Then on the 2nd leg, Main Duck to Ford Shoal, we sailed through 6 to 8 foot seas, in about 13 to 17 knots of wind. Our average speed here was 7 to 8 knots, sailing 40 to 60 degrees to the wind. We put 2 miles between us and the boats behind us in this leg. We passed 3 boats and caught up to the fleet ahead of us. After this race, I think our PHRF rating of 87 is fairly fair. I think we have so many areas we can improve on as sailors that in the next many years we will do much better.