LI sailors chart a racecourse to England

The prospect of one to two weeks of arduous work punctuated by periods of high winds, rough seas and dense fog hasn't deterred five Long Island sailors from racing across the Atlantic Ocean.

In fact, that's part of the allure.

"Even though it is hard work, there is something very special and relaxing about being offshore in a sailboat," Rob Windsor, of East Northport, said last week before setting out on the Transatlantic Race 2011 from Newport, R.I., to southwest England.

Now in mid-ocean, he reported Wednesday night by email that "wind and waves are starting to die down a bit from the past 24 hours where we were seeing high winds and strong seas. We have been socked in by fog since Sunday and can't see much past 200 yards."

Windsor and the other Long Islanders crewing on three yachts are embarked on their biggest sailing challenge: their first Atlantic crossing. The 30-yacht fleet making the 3,423-mile passage ranges from 40-footers to the 289-foot Maltese Falcon. They departed in three groups between June 26 and last Sunday with the first boat expected to finish this Sunday.

Windsor, 39, is sharing the workload on a 40-footer owned by Michael Hennessy of Mystic, Conn. Kaity Storck, 25, of Huntington Bay and New Orleans, is racing with a young crew on a 65-foot U.S. Merchant Marine Academy yacht. And Robert Forman, a 71-year-old retired computer entrepreneur from Bay Shore, is skippering his own boat with two other local residents on his crew.

Forman's Jacqueline IV, a Hinckley Southwest 42 named after his wife, was in the first group to depart. He began racing on the Great South Bay in 1969, moved on to the Around Long Island races and then 11 Newport-to-Bermuda races.

"I've done over 50,000 miles of bluewater [ocean] sail racing," he said. "But I've never done a Transatlantic race, so I thought this would be a nice thing to do."

His crew of seven includes his daughter, Kara, 40, now of San Francisco, who taught sailing at Babylon Yacht Club; Mike Saganic, of Brightwaters; and Victor Ganzi, of Bay Shore.

Forman said one concern is fatigue. "You've got to be laying down and trying to sleep at least 10 hours a day," he said.

Windsor was in the second start June 29 on a Class 40 yacht named Dragon. After learning to race on Long Island Sound, Windsor works at a local sail-making shop and has won regional and national championships on smaller boats.

Making his first trip across the Atlantic "has been on my must-do list for quite a while," Windsor said. But he noted that "with only two of us on board, there is a bit more work."

Fatigue hasn't been an issue, he said. "We swap two-hour watches during the night and then have four-hour watches during the day."

Vanquish, the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy's IRC 65, departed Sunday with a crew including Storck and 13 others. "I am helmsman/trimmer, so I drive the boat a lot and I trim sails," she said.

Storck, who previously sailed in a Bermuda race, said "I like the idea that you're racing the whole time. In the other kind of racing I do, the race is like an hour long and then you get to take a break and you go home at night. It's definitely challenging when you're sailing in the middle of the night with a lot of wind."

To follow the race and read blogs from the boats, visit www.transatlanticrace.com, follow TR2011 on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/TransatlanticRace2011 and Twitter @TransatRace2011 http://twitter.com/TransatRace2011

Watch videos at http://www.youtube.com/TransatRace2011
Follow Dragon with local sailor Rob Windsor on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/DragonOceanRacing and Twitter @DragonOceanRace http://twitter.com/DragonOceanRace

Follow Vanquish with local sailor Kaity Storck on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/All-American-Offshore-Team/141371945922677 and Twitter @AAOT http://twitter.com/AAOT.

For more information go to http://www.oakcliffsailing.org/offshore/