We had one last training day before the Route du Rhum. It was great to get both spinnakers out with the new tack zips and work through maneuvers one more time. It was even better for Polkadot (Alex Mehran, USA154) to be out as well. Here are some of Alex’s drone shots while we both had the fractional spinnakers:
We had a blast on the delivery to St. Malo with 30-40 kts to start.
It was a long and slow edition of RBI, but still was a fantastic experience. Kite finished as the second Class 40 in 13 days, 10 hours. While we all needed a shower and some proper food, we finished with water and food to spare and in good spirits.
In total, it was a great shakedown for the Route du Rhum and a wonderful wrap-up to our season of sailing around (figuratively and literally) the UK. With the 1800nm in this course, it brought our annual total to about 6,000nm across solo, double-handed, and crewed races and training. Some additional sights of the course:
KITE USA 144 