From The Boat

The Front Row

We just returned to Newport on delivery, spending only 24 hours in Bermuda. The objective from the start was to only worry about the other 3 TP52's and not care about IMS because the boat's unfavorable rating. We had not
optimized, i.e. slowed the Rosebud down at all. Who would think we would win the race overall and the 4 52's would be 1-4 in class! The race was really fun, downwind start, a bit of fog to separate the boats and the first night we took a couple of ugly gybes on a few shifts to put 3 miles between us and the next closest 52, Brightstar at the morning sched.

The breeze filled in the next day and by Saturday night we were in the gulfstream and running in 18- 28 knts. of breeze. We gybed a few times to stay in the stream longer, having up to 5 kts. Of current pushing us along at times. It was a little
dicey as our heaviest running kite was only the A2 - a light air sail. Under the IMS rules we could only carry 4 spinnakers, and trying to cover the whole projected wind range of the race was tough. At the Sunday morning Sched. We had extended our lead over the other 52's and the rest of the big IMS raceboats by a fair bit, 11 miles on the Brightstar with something like
20 miles of leverage and up to 60 miles on the other two who were back battling it out with the Blue Yankee and the boat 'built to win the race' the Partimigin, the new IMS 52 (Now that is funny - Ed).

Sunday brought a front passing over us and with it the wind went light and forward, so we spent some time on the wind
and tight reaching to avoid an eddy in the stream, basically a big swirl of current. Our plan was to set up on the North East corner of it and get a bit of a push towards Bermuda, what really happened was we spent the afternoon and night not being able to jibe onto Port because each time we would, we had two kts. of current on the beak! After convincing ourselves that the other 52's and everyone else played the eddy better and sailed around us, we finally gybed late Sunday night towards Bermuda with the current down to a little over a knot, feeling like we had lost the race.

When the sun came up Monday morning we could see two boats, one on our bow and one to leeward. We were gaining range on them, so they must be TP52's, but as we got a little closer it was the Carrera and Titan, 81 and 75 footers!! With only 60 miles to go it was a light air reach to the big lighthouse on the end of Bermuda, finishing at 10:15 in the morning a little over an hour after Carrera and only 20 minutes behind the R/P 75 Titan!! The next boat, Brightstar finished over 2 hours later, followed by the new Sjambok and then Lightwave (ex-Alta Vita) came next later in the afternoon. We knew we had won our class, but it was not until the next day that we were informed that we had won the Gibbs Hill Lighthouse Trophy for 1st overall. Roger and the entire team are really thrilled to win this race, on Roger's first try and with not expecting to place at all in IMS. We did the quick turnaround to get the boat taken apart to ship to the Great Lakes for the Chicago - Mac race in a few weeks. The crew for the Rosebud was: Roger Sturgeon, Adrienne Cahalan, Brent Ruhne, Malcolm Park, Jono Swain, Kevin Miller, Morgan Larson, Keats Keeley, Mikey Jourbet and Ty Pryne.