Well we made it to Bermuda. Race did not go super well, but I did learn a ton and will do some things differently in the future. I had some tears when we retired 21nm out from kitchen shoals, but I feel well prepared for the next one. ;-)
Also, I was really pleased with how well all our prep work held up. No damages except the loss of one chart plotter in a massive T-storm, and the spinnaker tack blowing out when someone refused to put it away when appropriate. I was able to jury rig it back through the block with a bowline but I need to splice it before another big race. I'm proud of what we achieved and I feel like I made major personal progress in my first mate and watch captain roles. I think (as is so often the case) confidence is the major take away. Almost every single experience that I have where I went in nervous and deferential, seems to result in drilling home that I actually know wtf I'm doing and need to be much much more assertive about it. (At least on "my" boats.)
Bermuda was awesome. We stayed at RHADC and explored from there for a couple of days, and then moved to St George's. I got to go back to city cafe and take James for a lamb pie, plus loooots of swizzles and conch fritters, wahoo and rockfish, beaches and touring around, etc. The ferries that stressed me out trying to get through the channel into Hamilton (22kts!!) were lots of fun to ride on the top deck as well, and are included in the bus pass! We had to delay our departure a day waiting for a replacement generator fuel filter.
The return trip was excellent, with just Jason, James (first offshore time!) and Randy with me. We had a very leisurely 2hr on, 6 off watch schedule, and I am super proud of how well James did with his first solo watches and first time offshore. It's a good thing too, because I got seasick for the first time in ≈6k nm. :-( Luckily everyone else was already medicating, and when it hit me I put on a scopalamine patch which helped a lot. Everyone was still pretty miserable for about 24hrs though. I don't quite understand why I finally got sick when I've been in much worse conditions. It hit before the Gulf Stream (which was actually glassy) and the wind topped out in the mid 20s, with waves around 8-10max. They were a very short period though, sometimes 3-4 seconds apart and slightly confused. After that we had a very peaceful trip though. We tried fishing but didn't catch anything sadly. I was prepared with extra soy sauce, wasabi and seasoned rice vinegar. Hopefully next time.