Almost home…just waiting for daylight

Stephan Ilberg

I was happy to leave Norfolk at first light to start on the 260+ miles to New York City. A cold, gray day with light winds turned out to be some of the best sailing on this trip. I ran downwind all day under full sails often doing 7s and 8s. At nightfall the wind died and I had to motor until about 07:00 when the wind returned. At least it gave me time to make some water, have some really yummy lobster bisque that I still had in the fridge and get a bunch of short naps in. The original plan was to stopover in Cape May, NJ but with the conditions being this good I decided to continue on. From 10:00 to 11:00 with wind on the beam @20 knots I decided to play with sail plans and did about 10 sail changes until I settled on a reefed jib, full staysail and a double reefed main to keep the lateral plan low and the boat balanced doing 7s and close to 8 again Utopia continued charging towards NYC. An hr later wind piping up to 25 and gusting 35 knots and now running under staysail and double reefed main only. Lady Liberty greeted us at 2:30, glad to see she did not move back to France yet😆 Now a few hours of sleep before the last 20 min to the marina

Boat & Crew

Utopia

Cabo Rico, 45

Harper

Family, Female

Corinne Gillespie

Partner, Female

Stephan Ilberg

Owner