Atlantic Cup

Ahhh…. birds are chirping, flowers blooming, trees are leafing and young love fills the air. Spring has sprung, or at least the very tentative version we are experiencing this year in the north east of the US. And with spring comes that annual ocean racing rite, the Atlantic Cup.

Starting on May 11 and spanning the eastern seaboard and hundreds of treacherous ocean miles across three legs of racing, the Atlantic Cup starts in the fine dining, fine looking, fine living city of Charleston, where there is always a church nearby in which you can confess your sins. The first leg send you to Gotham, where sin is the norm and the layover inevitably involves excess. Then a second leg takes you to Newport, where the only sin I have been able to find so far is saling and if that is sinning then count me amongst the happily damned. The racing wraps up with a third leg of inshore racing in Newport where we switch from the double handed format of the ocean legs to a fully crewed set up to help speed things up in the corners.

As has been proven across the last 7 years, the Class 40′s offer some spectacularily close racing. A single mistake in preparation, sail cross overs, or navigation can mean the difference between first and last in a fleet that has an uncanny nack of finishing within minutes of one another after hundreds of miles of racing. With no transat last fall or winter to bring the european boats west, this year’s edition of the Atlantic Cup has brought a strong fleet of mostly US based sailors. With seven boats lining up this coming Saturday with an interesting mix of experience and designs, the racing should be exciting.