avionbianca   Blog for s/v Avion

Blog for Day 15

Agonizing Finish (An Adventure or an Ordeal?)

Day 15 5:20 A.M PDT (2:20 HST) (Less than 5 miles from Finish)

When I awoke and looked at my watch, I was surprised to see that I had exceeded my off watch schedule by an hour.  Either I was more tired than I thought or we were really close to the finish and Tom wanted to stay up.  This also concerned me because my last check of the GPS was showing that we were scheduled to finish at 3 a.m. local time so I figured we were really close.   As I climbed up the companion way I could see Kent at the foredeck changing the head sail from the Jib Top to the #3 jib.  The wind has lighten considerably and had clocked around to our nose requiring an upwind sail change; 28 headsail changes for Nico, 1 for Kent.  I saw Kent reach for the magic marker and place one hash mark on his forearm!

Tom told me that Red Cloud, one of our primary competitors from the same yacht club, had called into the race committee at the 5 mile mark right after us.  Cool I thought we passed them over the past day or so.  As we got closer to the finish line the winds continued to drop to less than 5 knots and our ETA continued to rise.  This is the psychological battle you face racing, due to decreasing wind speed, the finish line continues to get further and further away relative to your ETA though the distance is actually getting closer.  I have never enjoyed this aspect of racing and after 2065 miles, it is even worse.

Within one Mile from the line we heard Red Cloud call in to tell the Race Committee they had finished at 3:15 AM.   How the hell did they pass us over the last 5 miles?  They must have had a better angle on the wind.  The Race Committee called back and asked if they had a light on their sails because they couldn’t see them.  We interpreted this as a good sign and hoped that they were premature and hadn’t crossed.  Red Cloud called back and gave their coordinates which was on the finish side of the line.  Finally the race committee calls to indicate they had them in site and that they were finished, damn!  Can you believe that after 2069 miles two boats that haven’t seen each other for over 13 days are this close together!

The finish line was a virtual line that the sailors were instructed to line up with a beacon on top of Pyramid rock and a flashing white beacon on the water.  We got within a tenth of a mile, a mere 528 feet and the GPS wouldn’t change (this is slightly over 10 boat lengths).  We would point towards the line and the GPS would indicate a 90 degree turn so we would tack thinking we could make the line.  But when the distance made good to the line went negative we tacked back.  We did this through an additional 4 tacks and finally we decided to just point the boat towards the line and let the waves simply drift us across the line.  45 minutes later we finally saw the two beacons lined up and Tom told David to shine the spot light on the sail and he called the Race Committee on the VHF radio to tell them that we had finished at 04:06.00 local time.  The Race Committee responded with a congratulations and welcome to Hawaii.  The entire Avion Crew let out a simulations yell and high fived each other.  The 2070 mile race was finally over after 14 days, 20 hours and 39 agonizing minutes tacking back and forth.  We changed tack more over the last 1 mile than we had over the previous 2069 miles!

The Mia-Tais were still 2 hours away.  Even though as the crow flies the finish line is less than a mile away from the Kaneohe Yacht club the entrance to the bay is 2 ½ miles the other way.  The organizers of this event are fabulous; they had an escort boat lined up for each yacht coming in.  We were immediately hailed by the skipper of our escort boat to turn to bearing 320, now!  We fired up the engine, placed it into gear and turn sharply to starboard until the campus read 320.  We then followed the escort boat for over an hour and a half to the yacht club where we were handed off to another smaller skiff that directed us to a slip.  We thought how cool is that we will have our own slip and we don’t have to worry about rafting up to another boat.  Now picture this, it is 6 a.m. in the morning local time, we just had two different escort boats bringing us to the dock and we could see at least 20 people on the dock clapping and taking picture as we were arriving.  Inter mingled with those people is my sweetheart Lindi, David’s sweetie Angie, my good friends Al and Michelle along with 4 lovely ladies carrying Mia-Tais and Leis; Juan’s thinking, yeah now we are talking   We are 20 feet from the dock and Avion stops dead in the water; she ran aground.  The port captain on the dock said to backup and navigate closer to the stern of the boats before making the turn into the slip.  Tom throws the engine into reverse and she pulled herself off the bottom, he then steered more to port and accelerated and was greeted with another tormenting stop; Juan is thinking the ice in the Mai-Tias aren’t going to last much longer.  The Port Captain makes an executive decision, he told Tom to backup and end tie next to the really big boats; those that had passed us so soundly days before; Juan’s thinking now we can hobnob with the big dogs.  Well this turned out to me easier said than done.  Avion was stuck in the muck and was perfectly content to stay; Juan could only visualize those ice cubes melting away to oblivion.  Our second escort skiff throws us a line and with trepidation and considerable fossil fuel consumption was able to slog Avion off the bottom and into clear waters.

I know Juan is thinking that we can finally have those Mai-Tias; well not exactly.  The Hawaiian government had to make sure that we hadn’t brought any foreign contaminant to the island.  Tom’s thinking that he shouldn’t declare Juan for fear of being quarantined.  Then we had to be inspected to make sure that we still had all of our safety equipment in place and our 6 gallons of water safely stowed; Tom actually had 7 gallons to cover Juan, just in case the Race committee took his best crew nomination of Juan to heart.   Finally the crew could be served their Mai-Tias.  Juan told me later that it was the best Mai-Tia he ever had and doubted he would ever have one better; for once I agreed with Juan.

After being at Sea for just under 15 days I have learned a lot about myself.  I have learned that I do enjoy extreme adventures.  I learned that through trust and fortitude I can accomplish any reasonable attainable task.  I learned that I can overcome fear and apprehension through preparation and accepting the fact that I am capable and those around me are as well.  I leaned that I must understand and accept my limitations so as to not extend beyond my capabilities but to push them to their limits.  I learned that solitude can be my friend and my enemy; the difference is simply in my attitude because there is a fine line between an adventure and an ordeal.  I had an amazing adventure that will live with me the remainder of my life.