We Eat Losers For Breakfast
Location: Antigua
Speed. We are speed. 1 winner. 2 losers. We eat losers for breakfast. (A little modified from Lightning McQueen)
And boy did we eat up the rest of the competition today. After our first full night of sleep in a while without an anchor watch, we woke up rested and started our day with a breakfast of champions (egg salad sandwiches) and went straight into race prep. With our sails secured and teams in place, we sailed out of the calm harbor and into the chaos of sailboats surrounding the coast of Antigua. Boats of all sizes zipped around the coast of Falmouth Harbor waiting for their race to start, giving us an amazing view of our competition.
At 10:30, our race began, and Vela, Chronos, and Kairos II took off from the start line. For the next two hours, we jibed, tacked, handybillied, and sailed against Chronos, staying off their bow for most of the race, while Kairos II was left in the dust. There were so many amazing boats racing around us, just a fleet of sailboats for as far as the eye could see, flying across the waves and around their course markers. Despite falling back behind Chronos towards the end of the race, we crossed the finish strong in the company of some whales seen around the entrance to Falmouth Harbor. We made it back to our dock absolutely exhausted, but so proud of our performance out on the race course. As we put Vela back to bed for the day, we checked the race results and found out that we won our race category by a huge 20-minute lead! Our competition had better be prepared for us these next two days of racing.
After making sure Vela was all tucked in for the day, we enjoyed a chill afternoon, stocking up on snacks, napping, and shopping around Nelson’s Dockyard before an awesome dockyard BBQ with the other crews. Today definitely showed us how all our hard work this semester paid off, and being able to test our skills alongside such amazing boats was truly a once in a life time accomplishment. But today was only the beginning of our racing, and we cannot wait to keep showing these other boats what Vela’s made of.