Final push

We've been having some great sailing these last few days, finally. Current ETA looks like Monday morning.

Last night we lost a few miles to the lead boat in our class, the Wyliecat30 Nancy. We thought we had an advantage over them in heavier air runing, so we've really enphasized the night watches to press that advantage. Night before, we had a 17 mile gain, while in last night's lighter air we lost about 3 miles. Drat. Still pressing on though.

This morning we ended up in front of a pair of really strong squalls, the first building to a steady 27 knots, so we took the runner down and put up the chicken chute, only to have the breeze go away rapidly. Back up with the runner, and the breeze build again to about 28 knots, with Friction Loss actually riding up and over the back of the Pacific swell. Some would call this planing, maybe a J30 really is a sportboat? -heh. We got a little video of it, hope to upload when we finish. It was tons of fun, and kudos to EP for building a .6spinnaker that can take the abuse we've given the poor thing over this race.

Food is running a little low, not counting the freeze dried stuff. We're all rummaging around for snacks and sweets and not finding much. We still have a bunch of Jolly Ranchers though- the surprising hit of the night watches. The cockpit floor is currently littered with the wrappers until cleanup in the morning. We have surplus fresh water, so have been washing hands and faces with it, a real treat.

-C

Halfway

After a very hard night's work, we're rewarded at this morning's roll call to find we've taken a 17 mile bite out of Nancy's lead. We flew the "chicken" kite all night in 18-26 knots breeze with no moon, 100% overcast skies, and big lumpy swells. I'm pleased to report I was the last driver to round the boat up, so there. We did a gruelling 3 hours on, 1 1/2 hour off watch system throught the night to keep 2 bodies on deck at all times, and rotated drivers every 30 minutes. I think Doug is the only one to get into the 15's, but Shawn and I have a couple of 14's so not too far off.

Last night was the first of our Trader Joe's packaged food- unrefridgerated "real" food in sealed pouches, and not too bad.

We're in a bit of a wind shift now and have jibed to port pole, a massive relief as steering with our left arms was going to eventually turn us all into left-side-Hulks, right-side-Pee-Wees. We have Jamani about a half mile astern now, closing slowly. They're a J120 that started two days after us.

Uh oh, two miles to halfway, dunno what we're doing, hope it involves a beer!
-C

Reach for it

Yesterday and today have been great reaching condtions, with the overcast finally clearing last night for some skies like we never get to see in So Cal. Today is clear and breezy, 15-18 knots, and Friction Loss is trucking along with reaching kite up doing mostly 7's and 8's. Forecasts look good for the remainder.

Food (cand you tell it has made an impression on us?) continues to amaze. Last night's Moroccan chinken noodle soup ws another knockout. Thursday's dinner was Italian beef stew with pasta, also un-sucky. Tonight we have Paella, and then one final dish until we get to the stuff we're less excited about. And the dry ice is now gone, so tonight's dish is self-thawed, tomorrow's will be beyond thawed.... Should be fine though.

Turns out Lavac's reputation is intact- no human has yet to clog one of their toilets and we can stop kidding him about doing so, and blame him for installing the valve wrong and giving us two day's of dread about a non-functioning head for the rest of the trip, instead.

Otherwise, no significant breakages, we're just sorry not to get those days back spent beating away from the coast. It looks like we've moved back to 2nd place, losing some 20 miles mostly overnight on Wednesday as Nancy found a breeze patch to our north and made big gains while we struggled in a really really big windless hole with sloppy sloppy chop overlaid. Definitely put the "un" in "Fun race to Hawaii".But we're better now, have a little leverage on Nancy, and some good conditions coming up where we think we can catch her.

-C

Turning a corner

So we've finally got a kite up, but it's to port when this is supposed to be a starboard pole parade kind of race. This is the first day we've spent time out of our foulies, with just a bit of watery sun poking through. It looks like the high is forming alright, hoping it holds together and lets us join up and have some good sailing.

Important trip notes: food- last night was another really good meal from chef James, Asian style braised pork which had bits of potatoe, ginger, red pepper, lime rind, and I'm getting hungry again just thinking of it. Tonight will be an Italian dish of some sort, thawing out now. The other significant news was the head, which had a backwards-installed choker valve which worked fine until some "real" material was required to pass through.There've been some fabulous poo jokes flying around the boat today, and some darn funny attempts made to clear what we thought was a blockage- foghorn in the bowl, upside down gallon water bottle stepped on, etc. Most involved splashing, and the horn produced a finely atomised mist blowing out of the bowl that I thought was particularly amusing.

Kite change being requested now, so gotta run.

Slow start

We've been racing for two days now, and still apear to be leading our class as of this morning's roll call. There's one boat straight ahead in the other class that started on our day- we passed them yesterday and they've made ground on us overnight. Working to fix that now.

Food has been very good- the first night was Joan's baked pasta with meatballs, last night was James the wonder chef's Jamaican chicken with pasta primavera. I know the freeze dried stuff is going to be awful once the frozen stuff runs out...

Weather has been very light, with lumpy cross-seas, and a low that seem unnaturally attracted to us- we just can't get away from it. Every forecast has us taking longer to finish, but they've all been wrong to a large extent anyway.

Otherwise Friction Loss is treating us well, no breakages, just two lost butt cushions over the side. Tying lanyards on the ones we have left...
-C

and we're off

Ole's waffles for breakfast, Burmese for dinner, Alameda has treated us nicely.

There's a few more jugs of water to get, Doug's probably furiously downloading gribs from his hotel, Shawn is doing some clean up, but Friction Loss looks surprisingly roomy inside, even after all the stuff has been stored. Makes me think we've missed something...

Next update from the water.

Up the 5 beats up the coast

We didn't make it to SF on Tuesday, but we didn't bust either. We pulled into the boatyard around 2am Wednesday, had a beer, and conked out on the boat. To be awakened at too-early-thirty by diesel trucks, a dog shelter waking up, grinders on fiberglass, and even raw unfiltered sunshine.

Tuesday morning we had spent almost a full day in the yard getting the boat fitted to the trailer, moving it forward (and readjusting everything to fit) twice to get the correct weight distribution. And then we had to futz with getting the rig secured to the deck in a way that wouldn't be higher than our permit "suggested"...

In the end it was worth it since the boat tracked nicely behind Malcom's truck, and Friction Loss was nicely coddled for the occasionally bumpy trip north.

The boat yard in Alameda treated us nicely, and after reassembling (and cleaning) the rig, we splashed into SF waters around 2pm and motored over to Oakland Yacht Club where we expect to remain until the race start.

Shawn is taking the trailer down to San Diego this morning, where it will be loaded onto Pasha's westbound ship. Other than that, we have two days at home to get last minute chores done, pack bags, review lists, do some additional non-perishable food shopping, and get some family time. Then we're all making our way up to the boat on Saturday for a frenzied two days of stuffing too much stuff into a too small boat.

Weather (this is through the 4th when I wrote) isn't looking as nice as we'd like at the moment according to some folks that have looked at the longer range gribs, but it's not looking as light as the singlehanders have had to deal with. We'll see- the long range stuff is usually off a bit.

-C