Anticipating and Preparing

Roger here. The Carib 1500 (rally) organizers have begun their website to track boats and assigned the boats to classes -- those who will race against each other. Except that ILENE, and a large percentage of the other boats, are sailing in the cruising classes. The rally organizers have gone to great lengths to prevent insurance companies from considering the cruising boats as racers, which could void some insurance policies. We don't have a fixed start time and will be listed, at the end, as having finished, sort of like a pass-fail course, which we hope to pass.
In any event, we are one of 19 boats entered in Cruising Class 6, and have some very classy "competitors": Oyster, Hallberg-Rassy, Hylas, Tayana and Moody, as well as four catamarans. We are one of the smallest boats in our class, with one other 43, one 40; all the rest are larger, up to a 68 footer. Median size is 49 feet. The point is that smaller boats are slower so don't be surprised if we are lagging the fleet as you track us across the ocean.
Today, with the help of Rick Palm (who sails a Saga 48 -- our boat's bigger sister -- and who is an organizer of the rally and two time circumnavigator) we got good fresh water pressure back by tightening up some connections and cleaning the filter, making Lene, the lady, very happy. Lene is a good organizer and put the papers relating to the boat and its equipment in order and became ecstatic when she was able to persuade me to throw some of them out. Another sailor lent me his wire snake with which I was able to fish out the aft end of the first reefing line, which was caught in the boom. We spent some time at Costco getting non perishable provisions and I rigged up side sheets on snatch blocks to try to get better performance from the jib. If this contraption works (an open question) I will post pictures. We also attended lectures on medical and safety issues, weather and the gulf stream, and a demonstration of the inflation of a life raft and ignition of a hand held flare. I sat in the inflated "six man" ocean life raft (on land), the size of ours, with four other people -- it is crowded. But of 1200 rally boats over the last 2o years, no one has had to use their life raft and I hope to pass the test and not become the first.