Cyane Crump will race with FBYC member Rives Potts' Carina in three races for the Atlantic Ocean Racing Series (AORS): (1) the Annapolis-Newport Race starting June 3; (2) the Transatlantic Race 2011 starting June 26; and (3) the Fastnet Race starting August 14. The TR 2011 is the centerpiece of the AORS, which includes the Pineapple Cup – Montego Bay Race, RORC Caribbean 600, the Annapolis to Newport Race, Rolex Fastnet Race, Biscay Race and the Rolex Middle Sea Race. Of the seven races in the AORS, three races, including the TR 2011 must be completed to qualify for a series victory. Each race is weighted equally in overall series scoring with the exception of TR 2011, which is weighted 1.5 times. All entered yachts are scored using their two best finishes in addition to the TR 2011. Carina is competing in the Annapolis-Newport, the TR 2011 and the Fastnet.

The Annapolis Newport is a longstanding race having been run essentially every two years since the late 1940's. The course heads south for 120 miles from Annapolis to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel, then east to the Chesapeake Light and then northeast to Newport, RI. You can watch the race tracking on http://www.race.annapolisyc.org/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabid=151 starting June 3.

The Transatlantic Race is significant because this is not a regularly established race - there have only been about 25 such races in the past 100 years. The TR 2011 charts a course that stretches 2,975 nautical miles (about 3,424 statute miles) from Newport to Lizard Point, at the end of a peninsula in South Cornwall (UK). There are 32 boats entered ranging in size generally from 40' to 115' - with one massive aberration, the 289' Maltese Falcon with three 190' masts. Carina is a far more modest 48 foot aluminum hulled IOR boat built in 1969. She is a very well known boat and has raced in at least two transatlantic races in her career (winning the 1972 race). She will likely be in IRC Class 4 (Racer/Cruiser), starting with the slower boats on June 26. The faster boats start on June 29 or July 3. She hopes to finish in as little as 17 days, but the race could take up to 25 days. The big fast boats are competing for a new racing record from Newport to Lizard Point for fastest elapsed time. Race tracking should be available at the event website http://www.transatlanticrace.com/.

The Fastnet Race http://fastnet.rorc.org/ is a well known 608 nautical mile distance race in Europe. It is well known for the 1979 race in which a number of people were lost in a terrible storm. Ted Turner was in the process of starting up CNN at the time and it was widely reported that he was lost in the storm. Of course he wasn't and he won the 1979 race on his boat Tenacious - with Rives and one other of the Carina crew members on board. Tracking will be at http://fastnet.rorc.org/blog/race-information/tracking/index.html.

The crew may be slightly different for each race, but the core group consists of the 10 TR 2011 crew members. The crew is mostly fathers and sons. Rives, Carina's skipper and owner, is the current Rear Commodore of the New York Yacht Club, and is a Collegiate, VMI and UVA Darden graduate. He grew up in Richmond, learned to sail at Fishing Bay Yacht Club and now lives in Connecticut. Cyane will be the only girl on the boat for the TR 2011, and likely for the other two races. Apparently this is noteworthy because the first question ESPN commentator Gary Jobson asked Rives at the program on the TR 2011 broadcast by Thomson Reuters was about the crew composition and the presence of one female crew member - apparently she is there "to keep things civil". How "civility" is measured after several weeks at sea will be interesting to hear about. Her brother Will Crump will be on the Annapolis to Newport Race crew.

In order to win ocean races you not only need a good crew and a good boat, but you need to make good navigation decisions. Navigation is now quite sophisticated. In the old days, mariners were focused more on identifying the location of the boat on a chart. Nowadays GPS and satellites make determining a boat's position much easier and, as a result, navigators now focus on strategically processing all available weather data in order to make the best decisions about where to go next based on optimal boat speed for those conditions. The Gulf Stream current which plays such a large part in the Bermuda Race likely will play less of a role in the TR 2011, where they will be focused on larger weather systems moving across the Atlantic and are likely to be north of the Stream. The bigger boats, like Rambler 100 a canting keel IRC 100 designed by Juan Kouyoumdjian, actually go about 4 knots (nautical miles per hour) faster than the wind speed. So if the wind is blowing 20 knots, they will be traveling about 24 knots. This means that they may travel essentially with weather systems. A slower boat like Carina will be doing well to travel at 7 to 9 knots. The TR 2011 will be a "great circle" route - meaning the shorter path to England is to head North rather than due East.

If you are interested in weather conditions along the course, there are several buoys in the Atlantic near the coasts that collect weather information that you can access on the following website. http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/index.shtml Just hover over or click on the buoy marked on the map for wind, wave and other information. You may need to zoom in to better see the buoy locations. NOAA also provides a NW Atlantic weather briefing and forecast each day for those of you who like to follow weather systems. It is available at this link. http://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/marine/nwatlanticbrief.shtml

Good luck to Cyane – we will follow her progress with interest!