Archive for July 2014
Day 6 Post By Jon
Sailing the Moon Beam
Day 6 8:00 A.M. (1593 Nautical Miles (NM) from Hawaii)
91 NM made good over last 24 Hours
We celebrated Nico’s Birthday in fine fashion last evening. At the 8 p.m. watch change we were all up for the festivities and it turned out that the Skipper’s plan was excellent. The dinner that had been placed on deck early in the morning was Hungarian Gulosh from Tom’s favorite deli in Palo Alto. But before the dinner was served Tom cut up some cheese and salami which he served with crackers. While we were passing that around he gave Nico a present and while Nico was struggling getting all of the tape, paper and packaging off of it Tom explained that his family has a tradition of delayed gratification when it came to presents and Nico understood completely while in anticipation of what turned out to be extremely gratifying. There turns out to be a tequila from Mexico called Avion, so what better way to celebrate Nico’s Birthday than to have a shot of excellent Avion Tequila on Avion watching a spectacular sunset while eating a delicious meal. The weather could not have cooperated better; the over cast skies were gone but remained enough clouds in the distance to make the sunset stunning and the winds were steady at 8 knots and the seas were flat. Just as we were beginning to have sensory overload from the magnificent views of the sunset David turned to the east and was greeted by the very top edge of a huge full moon graciously exposing itself to his amazed eyes. He let out a hollow that could only be compared to a child having just seeing his favorite gift under the Christmas tree. We all turned to see what all the excitement was and were able to watch the big orange ball slowly rise out of the water. When I asked John if he knew why the moon looks so much larger on the horizon. He made it very logical. He said that it is overly plump from having absorbed all of the water while rising up from the Ocean and as it rises it drips the water out thus the reason it gets smaller (less plump) as it gets further into the sky!
I took the helm shortly after the sunset and our course took us directly up the moonbeam. For those of you that have never had the pleasure of sailing the moonbeam it is a great experience. The illusion is that you are travelling much faster than during the day time because of the way the moon light reflects off of the water. Last night’s sail was one of the best I have ever had. They had to pry me away from the helm after 2 hours, twice our standard helm time. The winds were blowing 8 to 12 knots and the boat was speeding along nicely at 6 plus knots with occasionally reaching 7. What made it so spectacular was the combination of the moonbeam, the illusion of more speed, and the smoothness of the seas. One advantage of coming off light winds for an extended period of time the seas haven’t had a chance to rebuild with the increased wind.
At 9:30 P.M. last night we crossed Longitude 130 W at 33 Degrees 26 minutes which is where I predicted yesterday afternoon but because of the increased winds we crossed it much sooner than I had guess. I didn’t think we would get there before this morning.
Day 6 5;30 P.M. (1513 Nautical Miles from Hawaii)
137 NM made good over last 24 Hours
The Children’s Hour just concluded and we are still holding strong in 3 place.
When I told friends and family that I was racing to Hawaii, typically the first question was; “How long will that take”. Having never raced to Hawaii I could only pass on what I had heard and typically for the type of boats in Avion class it takes between 12 to 14 days. To analyze this further the distance between San Francisco Bay and Kaneohe Bay is 2070 so in order to make those times we will have to average between 148 to 172 nautical miles per day. Through 8 am this morning we have averaged only 95 miles per day which keeping that average would take us over 21 days which is way past the deadline on the 25th of July. I think it would be good to show not only our progress to Hawaii but what has been the last 24 hour progress. So as I log the date and time I will include both the distance from Hawaii and the distance made good over the past 24 hours if I have a reading for that particular time 24 hours ago.
To start this new information base I have provided the following which chart of our24 hour period:
Start 1:40 A.M to Day 2 8:00 A.M. 50 NM
Day 2 8:00 A.M. to Day 3 88:00 A.M. 101 NM
Day 3 8:00 A.M. to Day 4 8:00 A.M. 164 NM
Day 4 8:00 A.M. to Day 5 8:00 A.M 91 NM
Day 6 10:00 P.M. (1478 NM from Hawaii)
I just came off my 4 hour watch and wanted to make a quick post before hitting the sack. Over the past 6 hours we have been averaging close to 8 knots with winds in the 15 to 20 knot range. So far I have come closest to the Rocket Club by surfing down a wave at 9.44 knots during my latest hour at the helm, a definite E Ticket Ride! I just heard down from the cockpit that Kent is a close second with a reported 9.20 knots. The Rocket Club if you are wondering, is the helmsman that drives the boat faster than 10 knots, I have seen it happen a few times. The fastest I have seen her go was a little over 13 knots surfing down a wave at Point Conception while racing to LA last summer. I have a good feeling that we will surpass that speed. The more we do the sooner we will be in Hawaii and the broader our smiles! We may just have a record day tomorrow.
12:20pm, Sun July 13
We just dropped down to the A3 (smaller asymetric spinnaker) as we have more consistent wind and need to carry it higher as we are changing to be heading more west, about 230M. Expect about 15 knots most of today. We seem to be out of the low wind for now. The weather files are predicting what we are seeing, so that is great. Today we spotted and hailed Coyote, just a bit behind us, they are in our division. Great to see and hear others out here.
Yesterday we turned a corner, in that we had sunny skies, a real sunset, and yet warmer conditions. I took a bath, which was great. We had a great celebration for Nico’s birthday last evening as well. It was great to have us all on deck together and enjoying being together on this adventure through time and space. We had a real sunrise today, and its now warm enough below deck that I am going to have to switch to shorts and short sleeves. At night it is only a shirt and foulie jacket for me, sandals, no more boots.
Soon after sunset last night the full moon started to rise out of the ocean, we had bright moonlight all night, still in the sky at dawn today. Nico saw a few birthday shooting stars as well.
The engine is running great, holding its oil now, charging the batteries at 48 amps right now. We do about 2 hours a day of charging. Dinner last night was mongolian beef stew. The broccoli casserole just came out of the freezer to thaw for tonight. For the first part of the trip we have preprepared dinners that are frozen on dry ice in a cooler. After that its freeze dried dinners, which will be good too. Kent did most of the dinners, some are from Tom’s favorite grocery catering service, Nico drove the gathering for the freeze dried end of the food. Water and fuel are plentiful, the boat is sailing great, and we are all having a great time.
Today was a special day. The sun came out and it warmed up considerably. We had a birthday on board, and we crossed the 130 degree W latitude line. As my more verbose crew might have already mentioned on this blog (I don’t know for sure, we don’t have internet access), today is Nico’s birthday. He is just 24 years old. He is our bow man, and brings constant energy and enthusiasm to the boat. He is constantly thinking about how to make the boat go faster. He is mature beyond his numerical age. I gave him a small bottle of Avion Tequilla, that we enjoyed during our first ocean sunset.
David showered showered with buckets of salt water and inspired me to do the same. Shortly after we crossed the 130 Latitude line and finally entered into the deep pacific, the winds picked-up to 10 knots and we got a boat speed averaging around 7 knots. After a day of relatively light winds, this was welcome. As sailors, we got excited by this increase in boat speed. We had much less wind during the day, and what we had was shifty, but we paid attention and made the most of every puff of wind (often lasting 3 to 5 minutes before dying out).
We flew the new S2 today, but it was too soon to hold the desired course, so we changed to A1.5. Avion is a unique boat in many ways, but especially in our sail plan. We carry both symmetrical and asymmetrical spinnakers. This gives us maximum flexibility in taking advantage of the wind. Most boats are designed for one or the other type of spinnaker, so this is a competitive advantage. Avion is a solid, medium displacement boat, so she is not the fastest boat in this race. But she has the advantage of being very stable in the water, and comfortable below, and stioll realtively fast. Someone recently said she was “cigar shaped”, in reference to being long and narrow. She has a deep keel and a blade of a mast, so is fast and stable, a good combination for a long ocean race.
The boat feels good. Crew have settled in and know where everything is. We are doing shift changes in 5 minutes versus 15-20 minutes a few days ago. There were no new issues or repairs today. We have plenty of food, water and fuel, although I think the cooler ice will only last another 24 hours. This race will take longer than the 12-14 days we planned for, but we should be able to adjust and handle it.
We only have email and text messaging access over the Iridium phone. I wanted to get data transfer functional as well, but it is just not happening. We have all adjusted to email as our means of communication, as it is working and reliable. I download GRIB files of the Eastern Pacific twice a day for navigation planning. The latest GRIBS suggest we will find some 15 knot winds to our south tomorrow, so we are heading that way.
More to come…Tom
July 12 2014 aka watch rotation # 25
Well just as we thought the wind was going to fill in it seem that the fickle wind gods and the ever changing Pacific High have decided otherwise. We are currently cruising at about 4 knots in about 5 knots of wind sigh. Every now and then a cloud with some wind comes through and things get exciting with anything form 8 – 17 knots of wind comes through and we all get hopeful that finally we will have some wind to bring us to the trade winds (typically moderately strong warm winds that are very consistent) and the sunshine. However, these clouds are short lived and we are back to sailing in light variable winds 2- 6 knots. Today we finally got to put a spinnaker back up and it seem to be holding steady. Until now we have been sailing with the jib topper mostly with a few attempts to fly a spinnaker that were short lived due either to a lack of wind to keep it full or clouds with too much wind. I have taken up a trick I learned from my sister and her friends at a party where they kept track of how many drinks they had by keeping a sharpie tally on their fore arms. I am doing the same thing except with headsail changes and I currently have 11 tally marks on my right forearm. There has been a bit of excitement when we went to check the oil last night and found a quart of oil in the bilge. The leak was resolved after a few hours of the boat being torn apart and we were very thankful for the light winds for at least the period of time we working on the engine. We are anxiously watching the weather hoping for some wind as of the latest forecast it looks like we will get some good wind by Monday. That is good news as at this rate we are in it for another 12 days, which was our prediction for the entire race. Final note the crew on Avion decided to celebrate my birthday in style! The got out saucicon cheese and crackers. Also they gave me for my birthday gift a bottle tequila by the name of Avion! Which of course we promptly polished off! All of this followed by the first really visible sunset and the most gorgeous moon rise I have ever seen
Le 12 Juillet 2012 ou plutot quart # 25
Just aux moment ou on croxais que le vent etait en train de se etablir les dieux du vent on decider autrement. A ce moment on avance a 4 knoeuds avec 5 knoeuds de vent. De temps en temps un nuage nous amenne du vent entre 8 et 17 knoeuds ety tout l’equippage espere que ca contunuira qusque aux vent de commerce (typicquement dees vent chaud et consistent) et le soleil. Malherusement, ca ne dur pas et on et rendu a essayer de fair avance Avion aux plus vite dans 2-6 knoeuds de vent. Aujourdhui on a finalment mis le spi et ils semble que ca va durer. Jusqque a present on avais le ” Jib Topper” malgrais deux essais a mettres un spi qu il non pas durer longtemps. A ce mment J’ai arde compte des changement de voiles en feutre sur mon bras droit. Heir on a eu un des avantures avec le motor qui c’est mis fuir de l’huile. On a trouver un litre d’huile sous le plancher du bateaux. On a reparer la fuite apr quelques heurs out on avias tout demonter dans le bateaux. Aux moins pendent ces quelques heurs on etait bien content des vents faibles… On regarde constament la meteo et ils semblerais que le vent vas monter lundi ce qui est bien, comme a c’ette allure on n’arrive pas avant 12 jours, ce que on pensais fair pour la course entire. Finalment ce soir l’equipage de avion on decide de me faire une petite surprise pour mon anniversair!ils on sortie un saucicon de fromage et des crackers. Et comme cadeaux ils m’ont offert une bouteille de tequila qui s’aappelle Avion quue, bien sur on a vite finis! Tout ca suivi pars le premier coucheer de soleil que on a puet vraiment voir et le plus beaux lever de lune que je n’ais jamais veux!
Day 5
Nico’s Birthday
Day 5 6:00 A.M. (1677 Nautical Miles from Hawaii)
When Nico came on watch this morning at midnight I heard Tom wish him a happy birthday. This great young man just turned 24 today and I am happy and proud to call him my friend; Happy Birthday Nico! Skipper Tom has something planned for us later in the day so I’m looking forward to the fun.
Tom and I got our watch schedule a little out of whack just as my body was getting used to the routine. I guess it is good to keep it guessing! Through the course of the day the wind steadily decrease, so much for the short lived vengeance of yesterday. We are not in the doldrums as before but less than 5 knots of wind isn’t that much fun. What happened to the “Fun” in the Fun Race to Hawaii. Based on the Children’s Hour yesterday afternoon we are not the only frustrated boat out here. Personally I am amazed at Avion crew’s temperament; it speaks well to their character and it is having a great impact on my goal of improving my patience; yes Lindi, you should be pleased!
As to why our schedule got out of sync? Tom was up 10 straight hours working on an engine issue. We have been running the engine a little over an hour a day, without it in gear of course, to charge the batteries. With the constant overcast skies the solar panel has not been able to stay up with the load. David decided to fix the navigation seat that sits right in front of the engine cover. He removed the engine cover to get a better look at the receiver hole and decided to check the oil while he had the cover was off and saw a big puddle of oil in the oil pan under the engine. This was not a good sign, besides be problematic for the engine we also have a limited supply of oil. The engine hasn’t had a history of oil consumption and oil was the last thing on Tom’s shopping list the morning of the start. There were only two quarts of diesel oil on the shelf, he wasn’t worried and was running late so he didn’t want to take the time for them to look more. Upon checking the engine oil after less than 5 hours of runtime David discovered it to be one quart low, leaving us now with only one quart. It now became essential that we figure out the cause of the leak. Dave and Tom stripped down to their shorts to perform the dirty job of cleaning up the oil and figuring where was the leak. They were able to determine that the leak came from the connection for the new oil hoses we just installed based on the recommendation of the diesel mechanic that checked out the engine a weak ago. Unfortunately the hose kit we purchased did not come with new copper washer seals so we reused the old ones. Turned out that wasn’t a good decision because they were torqued out of shape and were unable to hold a new seal. Not to worry, resourceful David had two plans. First he had purchased a set of copper washers of variable diameters for this type of purpose. Unfortunately, one of the fittings had a diameter that had no matching washer so he improvised. He cut out aluminum washers from the casserole pan Kent used for the delicious dinner we had last night. This option turned out to be unnecessary because one of the slightly larger copper washers seemed to hold the seal just fine. When the engine was fired up we all were happy when David and Tom reported no leaks found. After Tom cleaned up he was exhausted so I told him I could stay on watch a little longer for him to get some sleep, as a result we are now 2 hours different in our rotation and my body seemed to adjust just fine.
Day 5 8:00 A.M (1674 Nautical Miles from Hawaii)
As you can see from our progress since 6 A.M. we have only traveled an additional 3 nautical miles closer to Hawaii for the past 2 hours, comparable to a very slow stroll. In sailing terms this is known as distance made good, or in our case distance made not so good! We may well have traveled further than 3 miles in those 2 hours but we were only able to get 3 miles closer to Hawaii. Typically vessels that are dependent on wind cannot travel directly to its destination known as the rhumb line (not the Mount Gay type) or great circle route (so named due to the curvature of the earth). So let’s take a few minutes to talk about navigation. If you remember back when I discuss the 5 races within the Pacific Cup Race, we are currently in race number 2. The first race was getting out of the San Francisco Bay and the thermal effect of the temperature differentiation between the Central and Southern Valleys and the Pacific Ocean. We are now trying to get over the Pacific High Pressure Ridge so we can get that sling shot ride to the Trades. Unfortunately the Pacific High has filled stronger than we would like which is the result of the light winds and slow progress.
During one of the many seminars we attended in preparation for this race it was suggested that the boat that crosses longitude 130 West at the proper Latitude will win the race. The big question is what that “proper latitude” is. We are currently less than 30 miles from that Longitude with our current lat/long position of 34 Degrees 00 Minutes North by 129 Degrees 30 Minutes West. Just like a clock there is 60 minutes in a degree and for latitudes a minute is 1 nautical mile, however, for longitudes a minute is 1 nautical mile only at the equator. Without getting too technical think of longitudes lines running around the earth parallel to the equator and as they get closer to either poles they become smaller in length but have the same number of degrees and minutes. As a result the length of a longitudinal minute at latitude 34 is less than one mile but don’t ask me to verify what that distance is. So with us only being less than 30 nautical miles away from Longitude 130 W we are looking at crossing it somewhere north of Latitude 33 North hopefully tomorrow. Only time will tell how effective that decision will pan out for Avion and her crew.
Day 5 5:30 P.M. (1650 miles from Hawaii)
We are averaging a little better the remainder of the day than we were during the early morning hours, but not by much. We only averaged 2 nautical miles per hour and for us to get to Hawaii to have some time to enjoy the festivities that number has to rise to an average of 6 miles an hour. Hopefully the pressure gradients will start to compress causing stronger winds and the trade winds fill in soon or we may be out here for a while. Oh well, I can think of a lot worst places to be. The water is warm, the sun is starting to peek through the clouds, the temperature is steadily raising and the water is a beautiful gun barrel blue. Having just listened to the Children’ss Hour on the SSB we are being consistent from the boats progress reports; we have placed third in the 24 hour distance made good category in our fleet for the past 4 days. We are happy with those results but are striving to do better. The good news is that we are currently sailing close to 6 knots in only 8 knots of wind so it looks like all we need is at least 8 knots of wind between here and Hawaii and we can enjoy the house we rented for the week of our arrival on Kaneohe Bay, but now we need to celebrate Nico’s birthday.
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Day 4
Getting Into the Routine of Things
Day 4 6:00 A.M. (1765 Miles to Hawaii)
I’m not sure if my body has gotten used to this 4 hours on 4 hours off rotation or has simply given in to what it realizes as an inevitability. I awoke in a great mood and immediately started telling stories to Kent and David, my two watch mates. I explained to Kent that he had accidentally found himself last night in the middle of the only excitement of the night, he vaguely remembered something happening when he went to use the head in the middle of his rest period. Awe, an opportunity to embellish a story!
After coming on watch at 100 P.M. the winds were decreasing from 15 knots fluctuating around 10 knots. We were still in a broad reach running the jib topper. The sky is still overcast with an occasional large dark cloud kicking up some turbulence so every now and then the winds would gust up to 18 to 20 knots. In the dark it was hard to tell which cloud was a thin lower level cloud and which were the larger cumulous with weather generating capacity. Kent had gone down replaced by Nico and was in the process of embellishing his own story about a family every 4th of July that was learning how to sink a kit sailboat and year after year he would come to his rescue. In the middle of the story I asked if he would like to relieve me at the helm since I had been driving for close to 1 hours and was getting a little bug eyed trying to concentrate on the compass reading and wind direction to maximize boat speed. Nico said that he was just about ready to go change out the jib top with the A 1 /2 (our largest asymmetrical spinnaker). The reason for the suggested change was because during Nico’s entire story the wind was consistently blowing around 7.5 knots causing the jib topper to flog more than we would like (a flogging sail is a slow sail). Again the process is to raise the spinnaker then douse the jib top. The jib top is a very large sail requiring two people foredeck to secure it. Luckily we had an extra hand with John on deck so he went forward to help Nico while Dave controlled the lines and I attempted to keep the boat under control. Why would that be a problem with only 7.5 knots of wind?
Unfortunately this proved to be a major challenge because just as the spinnaker went up the wind increased to 20 knots due to one of those unseen cumulus clouds. This sail is rated for no more than 12 knots; obviously we were way over powered by a significant amount. When a boat is over powered its normal behavior is to round up and with that much sail area (remember the largest sail package we could have at the time) she tends to heal significantly. While Nico and John were struggling to secure the large flapping sail coming down onto the deck they kept yelling for me to turn further down wind to keep the boat from healing so much. This becomes a challenge for the helmsman because to do that he needs helm relief because the boat is wanting to go in the opposite direction and is fighting the helm like a spoiled child making a fuss for not getting his way. I was finally able to turn down wind, east of south, not the direction to Hawaii which is significantly west of south. Nico came back to the cockpit and looked over the situation and suggested strongly that we should immediately take down the spinnaker and put the jip top back up, he received no arguments from the crew. Again Nico review the same plan as the night before for this particular head sail change but I couldn’t do the squirrel job because I was at the helm. In the meantime, unbeknown to us, Kent was woken by the flogging of the sails and listing of the boat so he thought it would be a good opportunity to go to the head to relieve himself. So as John ran forward to squirrel the spinnaker he had to go through the head to get to the peak of the boat to pull it into the boat. Unfortunately for Kent he discovered first hand that there isn’t much privacy on a race boat while in the middle of a race; certain things have priority, Mother Nature calling has to take a second fiddle to cumulus clouds exerting their authority! As soon as Nico came back to the cockpit he picked up his story right where he left off as if nothing happened.
Day 4 6:00 A.M. (1755 Miles from Hawaii)
Since I was on watch and Tom was in the bunk I told him that I would handle reporting our positions to the race committee. This is an important task because not doing so can result in a 1 hour time penalty added to your elapsed time and many races are won and lost with less than an hour differential. I reported the position via email and then verified it again during the roll call at 9:30 A.M. One of the boats in the race gets all of the boats positions and then reports the location of every boat with a verification from those boats having a SSB radio and are on frequency. I wrote down every boats position and from what we can tell there is one boat in our fleet that is definitely ahead of us but we are not sure about the others. We will find out at the children’s hour later this afternoon.
9:03am, Fri July 11
We’ve been getting more wind, 10 knots right now, but teens up to low 20’s off and on. We’ve been flying the largest asymmetric spinnaker (A1.5) some, jib topper otherwise, #1 jib on deck but not getting used the last few days. We had one episode last night where we had 7 knots, put the asym up, and had 18 knots right away, too much to carry that sail on the angle we had for the course we wanted, that was a little exciting, but no big deal. We had it up and down in about 10 minutes of concerted effort, good for a laugh. Had a reef in the main a good part of yesterday, boatspeed up to 8+ knots at times. It was fun to have moved up to 3rd place in our division at the 5pm ssb radio hour. 2nd today? Still overcast, brief glimpses of sun and moon, clouds more formed today, so there is a change. Notably warmer air temps, and the water color has changed to deeper shade of blue. all boat systems working, we had about 2.5 amps of solar charging in the overcast, will have more when we break into the clear. Running the engine twice a day for about an hour. We’re doing 4 hours on 4 hours off watches, with 3 teams of 2 each, with staggered changes, its working well. We’re doing about an hour at a time driving, so that keeps us fresh and awake.
Day 3
The Wind Has finally arrived with Vengeance
Day 3 8:00 A.M. (1919 Miles to Hawaii)
At 10 P.M. when I came on my watch Avion had just crossed longitude 124 and true to John’s prediction the wind was filling. I got some decent sleep on my down time so I was willing and able to contribute. Kent and David were on top side and had big grins because we were finally making way. The winds were moderate in the low teens and continued build during my shift. By the end of my shift the asymmetrical spinnaker was too much power for the boat so we planned to take advantage of the extra hand to raise the jib topper and lower the spinnaker. This is the order because you do not want have a bare head while racing, that tends to be slow. Nico in his normal coaching fashion went over the procedure we were to follow and who was going to do what. Since I was already below and had partially taken off my foul weather gear I was selected to be the squirrel, this is the person below the fore hatch that frantically pulls the spinnaker down into the peak berth where we store all of the sails. So the jib topper went up and the spinnaker came down without a hitch. After two hours of my 4 hour watch at the tiller I was tired and ready for bed.
By the time of my next watch at 6 A.M came on the wind had continued to build to up to 25 knots. Before I came up they had put a reef in the main sail and we were seeing consistently 8 knots of boat speed. Our peek speed while I was at the helm was 9.50 knots, this is infinitely better than 24 hours earlier when we were measuring our boat speed in 4 100th of a knot. We may just make it to Hawaii with some time to party before we have to sail back.
Day 3 5:00 P.M. (1850 miles to Hawaii)
We raised the rope antenna for the SSB and tuned into the Children’s Hour to see if our position has improved. The logic here is that is that being a medium displacement boat that is relatively heavy has a more difficult time making its speed rating than the lighter boats in our fleet. We have been hoping for stronger winds where we can realize her full potential. As suspect we did improve our position by 1 so we are now in 3rd place. Our goal is to continue to improve all the way to Hawaii.
All is good on board with only a few minor mishaps. We are all healthy, eating well and in good spirits. The boat listing to port with the increased speed is causing it a little more difficult to maneuver around and getting all the foul weather gear on to go up onto watch. It also makes it difficult to write and one of the issues was that the inverter I brought doesn’t want to charge my laptop that was easy to use in my berth. Now I’m having to us the onboard computer at the nav station with a strap holding me from falling over backwards with the list of the boat. We did see a few minor squalls today that spit a little rain and increased our wind by about 5 knots periodically but basically steady winds with a slight decrease over the course of the day. Currently we are seeing 12 to 13 knots of wind with 7 knots of boat speed with a reefed main. At this rate we should be able to finish around our estimated time.
Thursday July 10 2014 12:16
Day 3 of racing to Hawaii but it feels like we are just starting. We had good wind to get under the gate and past mile rock, but beyond that winds got REALLY light. We made an average of 2 knots for most of Tuesday and all of Wednesday. A pod of humpback wales escorted us to the Farallon Islands and a pod of Dolphins joined them briefly to wave us off. Last night however the wind finally started up starting at around 8 knots and building to 25. We have changed headsail 5 times now starting with the, smaller, #3 jib out the gate then shifting to the, biggest, #1 jib once we were out. Fairly quickly, we shifted to the Jib Topper, a large reaching jib. Yesterday evening we put our first spinnaker up ,.75oz asymmetric, but it only lasted a few hours as the wind was building and the boat was getting a bit over powered. We now have the Jib topper back up and are making 7-8.5 knots of boat speed in 9 – 12 knots of wind and heading south west hoping to get below a small section of light wind that seems to be charging at us. That’s all for now I now have 3 hours to get some sleep before my next watch.
Jeudi 10 Juillet 2014 12:16
Notre troisem jour de course vers Hawaii mais on a impression d’avoir juste commencer. On a eu du bon vent pour passer le Golden Gate et sortir de la bai, mais apr ca le vent et tomber et on a fait en moyenne 2 knoeud pour la plus part de mardi et mercredi. On a eu des ballennes qui nous a suivi jusque aux isles des Farallones avec quelque dauphins pour nous dire au revoir. Heir soir le vent et finalment monter a 8 knoeuds et a continuer a monter jusque as 25 knoeuds. On changer de voile 5 fois jusque a present. On a commencer avec le #3 (pettit) foc pour sortir de la bai, etay puis on a monter le #1 (plus grand) foc. Assez rapidment on a changer pour le “Jib Topper” un genre de grand foc pour vent de travers. Heir soir on a mis notre premier spi, aasymetric leger, maais can a que durer quelques heurs comme le vent et monter et on commencer a avoir trop de toile. A ce moment la on a le “Jib Topper” et on avance a 7-8 knoeuds avec 9 – 12 knoeuds de vent. On se derige vers le sud west et on espere se placer aux sud de une section de peut de vent qui viennes sur nous. C’est tout pour l’instant je vais me couches pendent quelques heurs avant mon porchine quart. Pardonnne les fautes d’autrograph c’ette ordinature ne comprrend pas le francais et ca bouge.
Untill next time
A la prochanine
Nico
Day 2
The Doldrums
Day 2 8:00 A.M. (2020 Miles to Hawaii)
Every morning at 8:00 A.M. we are required to provide our position to the race committee. They have accurate transponder information off of Yellow Brick Road which isn’t delayed the 6 hours everyone else sees, so the check in is to verify that position. The boats can provide the information one of four ways; call in on a Sat Phone, Email via Sat Phone, SSB Email or provided it at the Roll Call over SSB at 9:30 A.M. I was on watch but Tom got up and sent it via email on his Sat Phone then I verified it during the Roll Call on the new SSB that works so well! So now we are officially legal by following the rules and regulations set forth by the Pacific Cup Race Committee. The cool thing about the roll call is that the provide all of the positions so having an SSB is helpful so we can determine exactly where the competition is.
Last night was brutal; no #@$% wind. The only wind we seemed to generate was the flogging of the sails as the mast swung back and forth every time a wave passed. The only good news out of all of that was that everyone else was in the same position. This morning at sunrise we had 4 boats all in a row spread out over less than a mile. Our fellow Encinal Yacht Club member boat Red Cloud and Avion must have passed each other a half a dozen times during the night. You have to stay at least 3 boat lengths clear of a boat while overtaking at night and there were times it was difficult to do that because of the lack of steerage due to no boat speed as the result of no wind. Though this is very frustrating it really fine tunes your ability to sail, the adjustments of the sails and at the helm has to be smooth and slight or you easily stall the boat.
We are settling into our watch schedule. The first day is tough because everyone is up for the start and stays up for a while because all the boats are close and the competition is exciting. We had to force the rotation to start around 1 P.M. yesterday The way it works is that we always have 3 crew members awake at all times. Depending on the conditions usually 2 can handle the boat, one at the helm and one controlling the sails. That gives an extra hand to help out with trimming sails, cooking, cleaning, navigating or working the radio. We have 3 comfortable berths on Avion and 2 not so comfortable pipe berths. With all of the practice sailing and the longer offshore races we figured the best option is to use the 2 pipe berths for storage and then we would have 2 crew share one bed call Hot Bunking. Just before it is time for you to be off watch after 4 hours you wake your Hot Bunk mate and once he is out and dressed the nice warm bunk is yours to sleep in; thus the reason it is called Hot Bunking. I share the aft bunk with Tom, Nico is sharing the port bunk with Kent and David and John have the starboard bunk. We started out with 2 teams changing watches at the same time and we felt that got a little crowded so we have adjusted 2 teams an hour and now we only have one watch set coming up at a time.
So after the Roll Call at 9:30 I woke Tom up at 10:00 A.M and he will be on watch until 2:00 P.M. (giving me time now to write this post). Tom is working on downloading grib files that show weather patterns now and in predictions. He put those into a software package that takes the statistics for Avion and plots a suggested course. This should only be used as a guide because we see exact conditions that the forecast only predicted so we will adjust accordingly. He just mentioned that the wind should increase later this afternoon at @ 5:00 P.M. This is good news because right now we are only seeing @ 3.5 knots of wind and less than 2 knots of boat speed. At this rate it will take us a month to arrive in Hawaii. The pressure differences out here right now are not favorable for a fast ride to Hawaii. Hopefully this will change.
Currently on watch are John and Nico. Nico came on at 6 am and is taking an extra hour to get our watch rotation in sync, so Kent will relieve him at 11 A.M. John came on at 9 A.M. and will be relieved by Dave at 1 P.M. and then I will relieve Tom at 2 P.M. and the cycle starts all over.
Last night we had a fabulous casserole prepared by Kent and his wife Joann. They cooked up about 8 dinners for us, froze them and then placed them on dry ice. We have no refrigeration but do have a propane oven. This morning Nico fixed us all hot oatmeal. We plan to have 2 hot meals per day, once the casseroles run out we will be fixing freeze dried meals that Nico has assembled. We will be eating well. As a matter of fact after the Coastal Cup Race from San Francisco to LA last summer we had the reputation of the boat that ate best, unfortunately not for sailing the fastest, those guys seem to only eat freeze dried because casseroles and dry ice weighs too much!
All for now, I need to get some shut-eye; a tired crew is an ineffective crew! Hopefully by the time my watch starts we will have a little more wind.
Day 2 6:00 P.M. (2002 Miles from Hawaii)
Still no wind, currently we have around 2.5 knots of wind and less than 1 knot of boat speed, oh we there are at least 4 other boats still in site that are in the same situation. For the last 10 hours we have only made 18 knots, which is averaging about the same as a really slow walk. We need to get west of longitude 124, and currently we are at 123.56, we are only 4 miles away at which time we should be getting into wind. I’ve got my fingers crossed (makes it hard to type) that we will be in the wind by the start of my next watch at 10 P.M. We did have some excitement today, we saw a few whales, one within 10 meters of the boat, awesome but also scary. John said that he was on a boat racing to Hawaii that actually got hit by a whale. I subscribe to the big mammal rule; if the mammal is larger than your boat stay clear!
There is a radio happy hour every day at 5 they call the Children’s Hour. Today we talked about food and broken heads (not human but toilets) strange combination but in a way they are related. I told the group that we some beef stew from a fancy restaurant in Palo Alto defrosting in the cockpit, so we are maintaining our reputation of eating well and about mid-stream in the competition, after the first day we are in 4th place in our fleet. We reported the exact same position as Red Cloud but because of the handicap they are in 1st and we are in 4th. Oh well, hopefully when the wind picks up we can take advantage of our superior speed.
avionbianca 