WindCheck Magazine Ahhhhh….Spring! (and more overexposure!)

Praise whatever deity you wish or simply physics; but, spring is finally here! And with it comes some serious planning. I just spent the morning with my wife, mapping out our summer schedule. Unfortunately, we don’t have big events like Marion Bermuda or Block Island Race Week on the list. But it is packed all the same. We are looking at the minutiae of the regattas in Newport balanced against the local cruising we want to do on Long Island Sound and what boat we need to tow the lad around on when he gets back from camp in July. It’s shaping up well! Exciting racing, relaxing family water activities, and a kid to continue to push (gently?) to absorb some more seamanship! Of course the WindCheck calendar is very helpful now that it is fully up to speed, thanks to our Editor-in-Chief! (send your additions directly to Zep@windcheckmagazine.com) Hopefully, our summer has nothing so dramatic as what some of our local yachtsmen have been up to these past few months.

I’m talking about Jason Carroll and his team on the trimaran Argo, a MOD 70, which we have written about in some fashion for three issues in a row. The first was in January/February, when my brother wrote a piece about delivering this thoroughbred from Newport to Florida. It gave some insight into what sailing a seventy-foot grand prix tri is like. Then in March, Jason’s team smashed the Pineapple Cup record from Florida to Jamaica. Both were worthy of your attention, were fun reads and thus, we thought, we would move on. Well in March, a truly amazing story occured with Argo and her competing in the Caribbean 600. This race, run by the Royal Ocean Racing Club, has a course that circumnavigates eleven Caribbean Islands starting from Fort Charlotte, English Harbour, Antigua and heads north as far as St. Martin and south to Les Saintes off Guadeloupe. taking in Barbuda, Nevis, St. Kitts, Saba and St. Barth’s, a 600-plus mile zig zag around these beautiful islands. Why, you might ask, is WindCheck covering a race that’s not in the Northeast and arguably, only for elite ocean racing teams from around the world (although many entries are intrepid amateur and family programs)? Well, the accomplishment chronicled by longtime WindCheck contributor and Argo Team Manager Chad Corning is an amazing story and as the skipper hails from Larchmont and the Team are based in Newport, it is one that we should all take some pride in! I’m not going to spoil it here but it’s a series of events that will unlikely be repeated. If you want to read all three Argo stories in serial fashion, (perhaps to your children!), you can do so on www.windcheckmagazine.com, unless you saved the hard copies.

One bit of serializing which we are pretty excited about is our coverage of New York Yacht Club American Magic. Last month we had an interview with Skipper Terry Hutchinson and this month, we are honored to have the legendary sportsman/businessman and one of three Team Principals, Roger Penske talk about his involvement in “our” Team for the America’s Cup. We also like to think we are a step ahead with this month’s cover shot. There will be tons of America’s Cup imagery being produced in the next two years so we thought we would get a jump on that exposure curve. We have some ideas for future month’s covers that will whipsaw you back and forth, from classics to kids, making sure everything that WindCheck readers enjoy is given proper tribute. For now, allow us to be early to a party that will undoubtedly be overexposed in the future (hopefully to the Northeast’s benefit!). And please, no letters about the cormorants being spooked in the fantastic photo by Amory Ross (they’re not gulls)….I’m not a fan of cormorants, but more on that in a future Log.