Skipper's log: Charlie Enright (USA), 11th Hour Racing

The last 24 hours will go down as some of the craziest in my sailing lifetime. We were going into the 8th night, neck and neck with APIVIA, we’d just taken over second for a sched, when the cloud came....we’ve all had em’...light, lifted; the competition sails away...they fetched down to the doldrums while we VMG’ed there for another 18 hours!

When it rains it pours…

First, we hit something with the keel, checked with the endoscope, no damage. Then we lost a sail over the life lines, luckily it was tied on well. Then the engine overheated, had to change out the exhaust system, while this was happening, we broached in a 30 knot puff and tore our A3. Once we got that under control we came back to a dead-ship...oh yeah, and we saw a water spout.

5 hours later, we have just arrived to the doldrums, a place that can be notoriously tricky. We chose to take our penalty as we arrived. We opted to take a 1.5 hour penalty for breaking our engine seal the first night in the English Channel. The other option was a hearing where the outcomes could have been: no penalty, 2 hours, or even up to DSQ (disqualification). Another boat stopped to do the same earlier in the leg; so with that precedent set, we chose to serve our time as well. Our seal broke when we went to charge the batteries. An honest mistake. Traditionally, we lock our prop in reverse, like most people do, so when we started the engine and it was still engaged, we broke the seal. Timing of the “penalty kill” looks to be as good as we could have hoped for, so, off we go, with nothing hanging over us. We're in a much better place than we were 24 hours ago!