Congere Sunset

Comment

Comment by PCarrico on October 6, 2008 at 8:07pm

CONGERE, an 82' Ben Lexan fractional IOR MAXI built for Alan Bond in 1989 as DRUMBEAT. Beven Kopel then purchased the boat to replace the 80' CONGERE that crashed on a beach in Brazil during the Buenos Aires to Rio race. Beven then donated CONGERE to USNA in 1997 and chartered the boat back for the 1998 Newport Bermuda Race where I was his bowman and 2nd engineer for that summer. The boat was then purchased by a porn dude who renamed the boat Spank Me BT (big time). The boat is now owned by a charter group in the Whitsunday Islands in Australia.
As a bowman, the best part of sailing CONGERE was going aloft and changing spinnakers. Since the boa only had one spinnaker halyard, to change spinnakers the new spinnaker was hoisted on the leeward jib halyard, and then needed to change the halyards by sending the bowman aloft on the spinnaker halyard, switching the spinnaker from the leeward jib halyard to the spinnaker halyard, and then the bowman comes down on the leeward spinnaker halyard. We change spinnakers 42 times on the 1998 Newport-Bermuda Race. This picture was taken when we became becalmed during that race.