Annapolis to Newport Race

Getting ready to head out of the office and off to class, but just wanted to make one final post before we debark for Newport, RI.

I'll be sailing on J120 Heron, a 40 ft boat which caries a asymmetrical spinnaker off of a bow sprit. The boat is owned by Greg Leonard of Bowie, MD.

You can follow the action HERE or check the boat's blog at http://heronracing.wordpress.com/. I will be blogging from there, but will try to post on here as well. We are looking to arrive in Newport by Monday night assuming all goes well and there is breeze. The weather looks decent, though there are storm clouds up and down the east coast. Nothing we can't handle.

We carry cellphones and blackberrys which work pretty well through most of the bay and out about 10-12 miles offshore. As do almost all boats, we carry several VHF radios including one with an antenna 56ft above the water that receives signals well over a hundred miles offshore and is a good source for general weather broadcasts. For the offshore races, we rent an Iridium satellite phone which provides expensive coverage of the entire east coast portion of the Atlantic.