PHOTO BY SCOTT EISEN
Children hang out on rocks at Chandler Hovey Park as sailboats make their way out of Marblehead Harbor towards the start line of the Marblehead-Halifax Race in Marblehead on Sunday.
By STEVE KRAUSE
MARBLEHEAD — On a picture-perfect morning overlooking the harbor, Jennie Aspinall of the Boston Yacht Club was thanking her lucky stars.
“Isn’t this just beautiful?” asked Aspinall, the race chair, of the 37th biennial Marblehead to Halifax Ocean Race, which set sail at 1 p.m. Sunday. “It’s a perfect day for this. We’ve been praying for a day like this.”
The event, which has been running for 112 years (with a hiatus or two, according to the race guide), runs approximately 360 nautical miles northeast across the Gulf of Maine and through the strong tidal currents at the entrance to the Bay of Fundy, and then up the shore to a finish in Halifax Harbor. Seventy-four boats will participate in the race. Sunday, the boat Prospector jumped out to an early lead.
The mileage is approximate because once sailors get out on the open water, there’s no telling what they might encounter in terms of the elements.
“They pick the best route for the wind and the currents,” said Aspinall, who is the vice commodore of the Boston Yacht Club, which hosts the event in Marblehead (the Royal Nova Scotia Yacht Squadron runs things on the other end).
The BYC’s other officials will be otherwise occupied. Both commodore Peter Fein and rear commodore David Bows are sailing.
Aspinall estimated that there were 150 boats out in the harbor watching the launch, and another 300-500 people at Chandler Hovey Park and other sites suitable for viewing.
As a salute to the observers who come out and watch, the race started out in the harbor, and then swung in toward the shore and around so that the crowd could get a better view of the boats. Then, they head out to sea en route to Halifax.
The challenge once they get out to sea will be dealing with the ever-changing elements, said Aspinall, who began sailing as a child while living near Stratford-on-Avon in England.
“You’re constantly tweaking things,” she said. “Things can change so fast.
“You have to respect the ocean,” she said. “It can turn up any minute.”
Especially important is the weather.
“(Saturday) night, we had a weather specialist to talk to the skippers,” she said. “The elements can be such a challenge. You can have light winds, and there are currents out that there that can take you, and there can be a lot of fog.”
The race began in Marblehead in 1905, and continued sporadically until 1939, when the BYC, which is the third-oldest club in the U.S., teamed with the RNSYS (the oldest yacht club in North America) and formalized the biennial event. There was a break in the race during World War II, but it resumed in 1947. Since then, the race has run continuously, alternating years with the Newport-to-Bermuda race (which the MHOR predates).
Aspinall says hosting the event is almost as much of a challenge as sailing in it. While the race may end in Halifax, all the sailors from New England still have get back home, which means they have to deal with customs requirements, “and we have to make sure everybody understands what those are.
“We have to find moorings in Marblehead for the boats that are going to be entered in the race,” she said, “we need sponsors, and we have to find a way to feed the sailors who are coming into town.
“Any money we make goes back into the race,” she said. “We’re strictly non-profit. We just hope to break even.”