151 Mercury Rising's ARC Day 1 (with some poetic licence)
Mercury-rising
Mon 21 Nov 2005 15:52
the old
town below, mothers unlatch the shutters of their daughters' appartments;
curfews over. Out of the harbour, the dark hull of the sailing yacht
Mercury Rising slips through the morning mist, carrying her crew towards
distant
pleasures of another kind.
On deck, a lone figure appears, stretches, yawns, and utters that now
familiar
nautical wake up call "....... hell, we're moving!"
Gradually, more shipmates emerge, blinking in the sunlight, carrying the
vital tools of the trained racing crew, a toothbrush here, a bacon
sandwich there.
Freed from the restraints of trailing warps and fenders, the yacht
accelerates through the breaking swell, and with ear splitting hisses and
cracks the spinnaker
soon reassuringly obliterates from view the 200 boats assembled across the
start line, barely a quarter of a mile downwind.
Blind to the heroic attempts of the helmsman to maintain a tolerable
distance between the mast top and the sea, the skipper dismisses as
unhelpful the
fleeting realisation that the spinnaker has never before stood up to 40
knots of wind, and retires to be strategic at the chart
plotter.
In a demonstration of independence, the boom gybes across to port, with a
bang that many take as the starting signal, allowing the rig to stand
upright just long enough to miss the spreaders of the nearest competitor
who, having held station on the start line for thirty minuters, is now
intent on closing the already impossible gap between her bow and the
windward mark.
Missing both targets by the thickness of her paint, Mercury Rising, with the
benefit of ten knots of boat speed, and an (albeit accidental) starboard
advantage, chases the leaders south, encouraged by cheery waves from boats
in her wake, and oblivious to the multilingual observations on the start
tactics of professional racng crews.
Race on!
( Editor's note: in the interests of fairness and balance, the start from
the skipper's perspective will be published in future editions ).