MoAlpha

Yeah, What finally did it for us was the mast track (holds the mainsail to the mast) breaking and threatened to unzip all the way up. We considered various fixes, but we didn’t have enough fuel to get home or to Bermuda from mid-course, and we called our families and retired. The race was interesting. The wind got variable in velocity and direction much earlier than predicted and we caught some lucky breaks, putting us 11 nm ahead of the scratch boat in our class and making very good numbers. We had podiums in our eyes when we turned around. However, at that point, we had already had the spinnaker up and down twice and ultimately shredded it, which would have been slow down-course. The trip back was most unpleasant. We had to motor and the last half was into high 20s to mid-30s on the nose, horrible chop, and lots of commercial traffic. One of worst nights I’ve ever had on the water.

As Mojo says, **** happens, things and people break, especially when you go hard. But the boat has an unlimited maintenance budget and we will have another shot at it.