Today was a good solid practice day for us on the GP42 Roma 2. We were able to sail for a bit pre-race in a light but building breeze with some of our old sails. It’s always nice to start out slowly in light breeze. The actual practice race started in around 9 knots. For sure we were a bit disadvantaged in those light conditions using our old practice sails so it was nice to be mixing it up with the top boats. The wind built to around 15 knots mid race which suited us a bit better. We had a really nice little tacking duel with Islas Canarias Puerto Calero out near the right lay line which saw us gain slowly each time but without enough runway to make anything solid out of it. The bottom of the first run included some close action with Caser-Endesa around the left gate mark where we pushed for room and forced them off to the right. Probably on a race day this would have gone to the protest room. The rest of the race was pretty uneventful. We finished a boat length behind Puerto Calero, and one ahead of Caser-Endesa .
Overall we feel pretty good about the day. We feel like we’ll be strong when we get into our race sails tomorrow, and we have plenty of small things to work through which is always good. The boat work list was very short so all in all a good day on the water.
Tomorrow, race day 1 for us, should have a similar building wind speed during the day although it could pack a bit more punch. Stay tuned for Day 1 results. Fingers crossed.
Patrick Shaughnessy
Official NYC Rum Punch - Cruise Week Approved
Punch comes from the Indian word "panch" which means five. The five refers to the fiver ingredients of sour, sweet, strong, weak and spice. The poem for rum punch goes: One of sour, two of sweet, three of strong and four of weak, a dash of bitters and a sprinkle of spice, serves well chilled with plenty of ice.
You will need the following ingredients:
1 measure of lime juice, freshly squeezed
2 measures of sugar syrup - see method
3 measures of dark Caribbean rum, the older, the better
4 measures of water
Dash of Angostura Bitters and freshly grated nutmeg
Place two measures of sugar in a saucepan with a little water and cook until the sugar has dissolved and add to the juice.
Add the rum and water. A good quality passion fruit juice can be used instead of water but reduce the syrup slightly.
Serve with plenty of ice, a dash of bitters and a grating of nutmeg.
LOWISA Rum Baba Cake - Explained
Rum Baba Cake a new LOWISA Tradition.
Rum Baba cake is a delicious party dessert. Rum Baba cakes are dense, yeast cakes that are traditionally saturated with rum. They are often topped with a whipped cream, but add whatever topping will make it your own. Rum Baba cake has a Slavic origin and the name means old women or grandmother in Slavic languages. The cake is often called "baba" for short, throughout Europe.
Difficulty: Moderately Easy
Instructions -
Things You'll Need:
6 eggs 4 teaspoons active dry yeast ¾ cup sugar Flour sifter 2 cups flour 2 tbsp. baking powder Whisk 1 cup raisins 9 tbsp. melted butter ¾ cup lukewarm milk ½ cup water Bundt cake pan ½ cup white rum
Homemade Rum Baba Cake
Step 1 Combine the eggs, yeast and sugar. Beat vigorously until they are not only combined but light and airy.
Step 2 Sift the flour and baking powder together until they are fully combined.
Step 3 Add the flour and baking powder gradually to the eggs and sugar. Whisk until it's a smooth combination, about 2 minutes.
Step 4 Add the raisins, butter, lukewarm milk and water to the mix. Blend until the mixture is fully combined.
Step 5 Pour into a greased bundt cake pan and bake for about 30 minutes at 325 degrees. When the cake is cooled, saturate with rum.
Baba (BAH-bah) – Baba is called Babka in Poland and in France. In French, the word baba meaning, "falling over or dizzy." These are small cakes made from yeast dough containing raisins or currants. They are baked in cylindrical molds and then soaked with sugar syrup usually flavoured with rum (originally they were soaked in a sweet fortified wine). After these cakes were soaked in the wine sauce for a day, the dried fruits would fall out of them.
1600s - It is believed to be a version of a kugelhopf, which was invented in Lemberg in the 1600s. The baba was brought to Paris, France by King Stanislas Leszczynska, the deposed king of Poland and the father-in-law of King Louis XV (1710–1774) of France when he was exiled to Lorraine. According to legend, he found the customary kouglhopf too dry for his liking and dipped the bread in rum. He was so delighted that he named the cake after one of the heroes of his favourite book, Ali Baba from A Thousand and One Nights. Later, his chef refined the sweet bread by using brioche dough and adding raisins to the recipe. The dish was then simply called “baba.”
Baba Au Rhum/Baba Au Savarin - A Savarin is a yeast dough baked in a ring mold and soaked in rum syrup, the center hole brimming with pastry cream, crème chantilly, or fresh fruit. The dessert is a close relative of the Eastern European baba, which includes dried fruit in the dough and is served without a filling.
According to the famous book called Larousse Gastronomique, The Encyclopedia of Food, Wine & Cookery, by Prosper Montagne:
"At the same time a Parisian Maitre Patissier, Julien, by omitting raisins from the dough, giving the cake another shape and changing the syrup in which it was steeped (this syrup remained the secret of his establishment for a long time) created the Brillat-Savarin, which later became simply savarin."
The Oxford Companion to Food by Alan Davidson says that one of the Julien brothers, from a family of Parisian pastry-makers, set his mind to experimenting with the baba recipe sometime in the 1840s. The result was this rich and tasty dessert, which he named in honour of Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826), celebrated French gourmet and writer on gastronomy.
The dessert became very popular in France, but the people called it Baba Au Rhum and soon dropped the name Savarin. In other parts of the world, the cake is known as simply Savarin. In Turkey this cake is called "father's cake."
Welcome to the Medcup Portugal in Portimao
Every time I return to a Medcup venue I am completely astounded by just how professional this event is. At each venue the event provides a hospitality area where we have; shade, air conditioning, food and drink, and all important internet access. On a day like today, which is race day 1 for the 52’s, and the practice race day for the 42’s, the tent is full of teams preparing for the day. The tables are surrounded by top level talent working on strategy for the day.
Our ROMA GP42 team is trying to bounce back from a less than stellar finish to the Sardegna event. We have our helmsman Paolo Cian back and are confident that we can make a good effort here. We need to focus on our starts and our prediction for the first shift so that we can make our lives a bit easier on the race course. We stand 3 points out of first for the Medcup overall and need to focus on the total event.
I’m returning to the crew as a pitman for this event after working as a coach in Sardegna. I only get one day practice after arriving late here as a result of a sales call in France on Monday. Even with plenty of practice time it’s a tough gig with the boat run in Italian. I need to be on my toes around the leeward gate as things can change quickly and with a fair amount of loud Italian emotion.
Stand by for an update after our practice race.
Patrick Shaughnessy
Our ROMA GP42 team is trying to bounce back from a less than stellar finish to the Sardegna event. We have our helmsman Paolo Cian back and are confident that we can make a good effort here. We need to focus on our starts and our prediction for the first shift so that we can make our lives a bit easier on the race course. We stand 3 points out of first for the Medcup overall and need to focus on the total event.
I’m returning to the crew as a pitman for this event after working as a coach in Sardegna. I only get one day practice after arriving late here as a result of a sales call in France on Monday. Even with plenty of practice time it’s a tough gig with the boat run in Italian. I need to be on my toes around the leeward gate as things can change quickly and with a fair amount of loud Italian emotion.
Stand by for an update after our practice race.
Patrick Shaughnessy
Romans invade Split, Croatia ..... August 2009
12 -19 August 2009***The promenade at Split with everyone out for their evening stroll***Roman centurions during the reenactment of the Roman invasion of Split*** We had seen this contraption earlier in the day and had tried to work out what it was - ancient merry go round with the children in baskets having great fun***Contemplating life at the Split fruit and veg daily market***
As we started our journey south back down the coast we were still experiencing a period of very settled weather, clear sunny days with temperatures in the high 20's with low 20's at night, light winds and flat seas and only sometimes an afternoon seabreeze. Mark works very hard at trimming the sails and we manage to sail nearly all the time if at all possible. This really is my kind of sailing, with the apparent wind rarely going over 15 knots, and except for the wakes we generally have flat water. We headed back to Rogoznica, and as there were no strong winds forecast we anchored much closer to the town. We stayed 2 nights, the first night we were joined by 3 other yachts, the second around 20. Plenty of room for all and a good stopover point.
Nibbling away at the miles we kept moving every couple of days. We had a great sail in a rare seabreeze from behind and changed our intended anchorage for the night as the westerly was coming right into it and turned and headed up into a large shallow bay (in Croatia if its under 20 metres we call it shallow!) called Marina. It was a beautiful spot, only one other yacht, calm and peaceful.
The following morning we were joined by Gone with the Wind again, they have been having ongoing problems with their anchor windlass jamming and it was in need of urgent repairs. Only problem was in order to do this they had to remove the anchor from the chain and bring all the chain in, not such an easy feat if you are not in a Marina. So they came up alongside us and rafted to us for the day while Liam, Mark and friend Pete set about doing what blokes to best, pondering for hours on the best way to fix it and after much deliberation actually fix it. Task complete they put it all back together and anchored for the night, testing the new improvements.
Next day we both moved on to Split. You are permitted to anchor within Split harbour as long
as you keep clear of all the ferry docks and marina entrance. This is somewhere you wouldn't actually mind paying as you are right downtown with great access, but they don't charge, go figure!!! We spent two nights there and very much enjoyed it. It was Roman festival week, with street theatre, ancient stalls - a cobbler showing the making of original roman leather sandals, a potter busy at work on his wheel, basket weaving and a variety of others, all the people dressed in toga's looking the part. There was an evening of Roman theatre set inside the ancient palace walls, with everyone dressed looking the part, while on the promenade there were stages set with opera concerts. Split was buzzing.The walled towns in Croatia just continue to amaze us, no two are the same. What I liked most about Split was its state of disrepair. During the day it really did look dilapidated, some buildings tumbling down, it was like a big outdoor movie set of ancient ruins, but it is a working and living town. At night it takes on a whole new image, with well thought out and placed lighting that gives it a mystical glow, it really is lovely. The harbour is pretty smelly though, but if you can cope with that then its an excellent stopover with a secure, free anchorage on the doorstep. Add to that the excellent daily market, closeby supermarket, pizzerias and gelatos stalls - it shouldn't be missed.
As much as we were enjoying Split it was time to move on, we headed south east to the southern side of Brac and the little anchorage of Lucice. It was crowded already with yachts on moorings but both Balvenie and
GWTW managed to squeeze into a shallow patch we found and had a comfortable enough night.A couple of adjustments were needed to the recent improvement on GWTW's anchor windlass so they rafted back up in the morning for a couple of hours for more work to be completed. Then we had a good sail again with light winds to the next island of Hvar. We planned to anchor a couple of miles away from the main town and try to bus in to visit. This was the place on our way north that looked to be totally crazy with bumper to bumper boats so we thought best to give the main anchorage a miss. As we closed in on it though, it didn't look too bad so we took a little detour in, had a snoop around, found reasonable depths to anchor in a good spot so dropped anchor and settled in.
The early evenings entertainment was supplied by an entourage of charter boats coming in to anchor, there is so much to say about their anchoring antics that I shall dedicate a separate blog update to it when I have everything else up to date!!
More on Hvar in the next update
Cruising info for Rogoznica, Marina, Split, Lucice on Brac and Hvar Town - Croatia:
Anchorages -
Rogoznica ... 43 31.850N 15 58.322E 16.5m sand with patches of weed
Marina ... 43 30.897N 16 07.221E 14m sand
Split ... 43 30.324N 16 26.031E 6m sand
Lucice ... 43 18.352N 16 27.142E 9.5m sand and rock. Not ideal but ok
Hvar Town ... 43 10.153N 16 26.312E 18m maybe sand? Lots of wash from passing craft but calm down after midnight for a few hours!
Internet - Rogoznica, Marina both unlocked. Split have a drink ashore and get a code, Lucice has none, Hvar take laptop ashore to wifi cafe
Money and Provisions - Lucice nothing ashore, all the others have everything. Fuel dock in Split with easy access (we didn't tie up, just jerry jugged) - Diesel 6.67kuna per litre, Petrol 7.44kuna per litre
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