Corinthian Resolve : The Story of the Marion-Bermuda Race

From the Intrroduction

“Since 0230 that morning, Karina had been enveloped in thick fog. The sky was completely obscured. Jack''s “Naviguesser” Mike couldn''t take any sights. He did have a thermometer aboard, an essential piece of equipment for sailors traversing the Gulf Stream. Karina didn''t carry the convenient hard-wired digital type used today. Instead he had a thermometer that he dipped in a bucket of seawater hoisted aboard for the purpose. The latest measurement showed that the ocean water temperature was beginning to rise. This was bad. Simultaneously rising wind speed and temperature are a combination Bermuda-bound sailors don''t like to see. It means heavy wind would combine with current, unpredictable squalls, and often tumultuous heavy seas in the Gulf Stream. If the wind blew strongly counter to the current, waves could build to a frightening size.

By 0600 Karina was straining under sustained winds of 35 knots, with gusts up to 40. Jack and his friends had furled the mizzen and genoa, reefed the main, and hanked on a working jib. At 1100, the water temperature spiked to 77 degrees; they were in the Stream. Moments later, Karina was knocked down on her beam ends by an enormous sea driven by a powerful Gulf Stream squall. Spreaders scraped the tops of waves. The RDF instrument came loose and crashed across the now vertical cabin sole. Amazingly, the beast still functioned when it was called on later in the race as Karina approached Bermuda.”

"Writer-sailor Mark Gabrielson''s new book is a fine, often surprising sea story of men and women who share a distinctively contrarian understanding of what sailing really should be—an adventure by amateur sailors in normal cruising boats making their damp, exciting way across rough seas to a beautiful, beckoning, remote destination."--John Rousmaniere author of Fastnet Force 10 and the Anappolis Book of Seamanship