Charisma showing her colors on the downwind leg

Going upwind, heading toward the finish...

A closer shot...

...and closest. With thanks to the yacht "Ice" for the nice shots of Charisma showing her stuff

I’ll have to admit that neither Ann nor I tire of hearing that. Today we raced in the Vava’u Challenge race, which is the final race in the Regatta Vava’u week and heard it on the radio as we crossed the finish as well as from other boats after the race. I should add here, that Ann actually steered about 60% of the race while I trimmed and set sails (yes, we were able to set it right side up today-works better than way). It was about 12 miles around the islands and we ended up in a gorgeous cove where a big party is still going on, on the beach as I write this. In about an hour they are going to light a giant effigy (of what, I’m not sure), Burning Man like. We’re going to be sitting on the deck with an after dinner drink enjoying the spectacle. But for now, there is still music and lasers-all powered by generators on the beach.

So the comments per the headline continued to come because today we got 2nd place in our class (Under 40 feet, no handicaps, straight up racing) and even beat all but three of the over 40 foot class, all while towing our dinghy! One guy motoring his sailboat as a spectator come over to us at the beginning of the race and yelled; “you’ll go fast if you get rid of that dinghy!” He thought he was being cute, but later when he saw that we were waaay out in front and actually racing with the over 40 footers, he came by again and yelled; “I had no idea you could have such a beautiful boat AND go so fast”. So, yes, it was a great day.

A gorgeous day-it blew 14 knots, flat water since we were inside the islands and blue skies. It doesn’t get a lot better. This has now launched our cruising of Tonga which we’ll be doing for the next three or four weeks before we have to get ready for the final crossing of this year into New Zealand on or about November 1st (weather pending/permitting).