BNY Mellon Challenge soon to start

7 days before the eve of our race and while we are enjoying almost summer weather in the South of England, it is 27 degrees in La Trinité and has been up to 30 degs in Cascais; but what will it be next Friday and over the next two weeks? That is the question that we would all like to know the answer to!

Briefing & Boat Inspections

I am grateful to Mike Short for his work in co-ordinating the boat inspections and to all skippers for their co-operation in making this potentially difficult logistical exercise relatively painless. I think that it has helped that Mike and also both Dave Giddings and Peter Chartres are RORC inspectors and so some boats have been able to have their Fastnet inspections at the same time.

Yellowbrick Trackers

All our boats are going to be fitted with trackers, which will enable crew families, lovers and hangers on to follow the progress of the race 24 hours a day. Please tell them to log into the JOG website and pick up Yellowbrick icon on the BNY Race section. Anyone who has followed a race that has been tracked will testify as to how additive this can be, so I do recommend you get them to check it out.

Also being tracked by Yellowbrick will be Cavallino, Andy Short's Princess 61 which is taking on Noj White's SX Girl in their Tortoise & Hare project, so that will be an amusing little side track.

Pre-Departure Reception & Supper

I am pleased to report that the take-up for the evening of the 13th has been splendid and whilst we are waiting for one or two stragglers still to commit, we have only 6 out the 80 available places for the Supper left to sell. Our Guest of Honour is Sarah Treseder, the Chief Executive of the RYA.

As the vast majority of our entries are represented at that Supper, this is going to be a very relaxed way of everyone getting to know each other, so that even if you are strangers when you meet on Thursday, by the time you get to La Trinité you will be mates and hopefully welcoming those who arrive after you.

BNY Mellon Crew Competition

This has been a little time in the gestation, to say the least, but I am happy to announce that BNY Mellon have now chosen the 'lucky' winner of a berth on a race boat from a competition involving their entire client base and he is Gregor Elliot of Ross, Bell & Co. Because he is a relatively inexperienced sailor, we have decided that it would not be appropriate for him to race to Cascais with so little preparation. However, the hope is that Gregor will be racing as a crew member on Nick Barlow's Red Zeppelin in a future JOG offshore race this year and I am grateful to Nick for his enormous co-operation in making this happen. We shall be covering Gregor's progress with great interest.

It only remains for me to look forward to greeting all those that are coming to the Pre-Race Reception and Supper next Thursday and to anyone who is not racing, to hope that they will enjoy watching the Race on Yellowbrick (for which a free App is available).