54 Days Later!

Well, it took 54 days - from August 12th when I left the boat at Keehi Marine Center, to October 5th when the boat arrived at the KKMI boat yard in Richmond, CA.  She's finally home and we can start figuring out what was up with the lower rudder bearing.  I met the trucker at KKMI around 1115 and by 1330 we had the boat and mast unloaded from the trailer.  While I wait for the rudder guy to free up, I spend the rest of the day unwrapping the mast (2 100'x12" rolls of bubble wrap I bought at Home Depot in Hawaii), and reassembling the mast (installing the spreaders, etc.).  We also came up with a plan to fabricate a cover for the radar mast hole that's in the deck.  Depending on what we find with the rudder bearing, we should have the boat back in the water next week.  Once it's in the water we can re-step the mast and sail back to Brisbane.

Post race update

During the race we had 2 GoPros and several cell phones taking pictures and video.  We also had the shore crew's pictures and videos from the start and the finish.  I've now had a chance to go through all of the material and consolidate it into our official Hokulani 2022 Pacific Cup videos.  There are two videos - the 15 minute version that gives you the full experience, and the 5 minute version with jus the highlights. You can find links the the videos here:

Long version:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zorM_KvXIL8&ab_channel=TracyRogers

Short version:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcpjNGXfx3g&ab_channel=TracyRogers

You may recall that on the last day or two of the race we were having some issues with our lower rudder bearing.  Rather than sail the boat home on a questionable rudder bearing, we decided the ship the boat home.  KYC was kind enough of let me keep the boat at their docks until the boat yard was ready for us to show up.  So, once that was arranged I went back to CA to get some work done and then flew back to Oahu on August 10th.  On the 11th we sailed the boat from KYC to Keehi Marine Center (about 43nm) - it took about 7 hours and between Koko Head and Diamond Head we hit over 16 knots surfing down the swells with a reefed main and the #4 jib.  You can see the video of the sail around the island here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFyuMrGxxrI&ab_channel=TracyRogers

A friend of my nephew was able to fix me up with two young (20 something) sailors and a buddy from Maui connected me with an experienced harbor pilot on Oahu who were able to help move the boat.  After arriving at Keehi we removed everything we could in preparation for pulling the mast and hauling out the boat (I had already arranged for a trailer, which showed up that day).  The next morning I was at Keehi at 0700 and disconnected the shrouds, forestay, backstay, and wiring so the yard could pull the mast - which we did just after 0800.  The boat came out next and while the yard guys arranged the stands on the trailer I disassembled and wrapped the mast.  By 1130 pretty much everything was done.  So that was August 12th.  Unfortunately, the next couple of eastbound Pasha ships were taken over by the military so the boat just sat on its trailer in the yard.  Today (September 12th) the boat got moved over to the port and is expected to be on Pasha's Jean Anne that sails for San Diego tomorrow.  At this point Hokulani is likely to arrive at KKMI in Richmond (after getting trucked up from San Diego) early the last week of September.  We can then figure out what's up with the lower rudder bearing and put the boat back together.  Back on the water in October!

 All ready to go, just waiting for a ship home...

                                              

7/18 finished!

 Hi all, we completed the race Monday morning around 0650 Hawaii time, just after the sun came up. This  continues my streak of races finishing in daylight. We completed the 2,070  nautical mile course in 12 days, 22 hours, 45 minutes, holding our lead in the fleet from the Golden Gate bridge to the finish.  However, given the slow first half of the race, on corrected time we just didn’t have enough race course to build a lead to finish on top.  We feel good that we were first to finish in our fleet and arrived before all but 3 other Monday and Tuesday starters.  We were welcomed into Kaneohe Bay by several heavy showers that completely soaked ourselves and the boat (we probably both needed it).  The welcoming party was great and for my first time we got a spot on the KYC bulkhead - which was mostly empty as we arrived before so many other boats.  Looking forward to the awards dinner Friday night.

7/17 update

Good afternoon everyone. Last night was nasty until the moon came up. We had winds in the 20's, completely dark, and crazy seas thanks to Darby. That lasted about 3 long hours. At this stage the crew is pretty tired so to make life a bit easier and to take it easy on the rudder bearing, we went blast reaching with white sails pretty much directly towards the finish at good speed. Today has been more of the same, gusty winds and big seas from a variety of directions. We've been power reaching and having some amazing surfing runs. Killer VMG. Looks like we'll be hitting 100 miles to go around sunset and finishing early tomorrow morning. Can't wait to get to KYC. To give an indication how loopy we're getting, John has been enjoying listening to Mark and me quoting lines from our favorite movies. Probably best kept on the boat…

7/16 update

Hi all, we continue to drive hard. Maybe too hard? Our lower rudder bearing is not happy. Not much we can do about it other that to be less aggressive in our driving and make sure it lasts to Kaneohe. We hit a top speed of 15.4 knots last night in the midst of out running a squall. The boat was lit up! Fuel for the engine is starting to run low and I'd like to rely mainly on solar to keep our batteries charged up. So, goodbye refrigerator - biggest energy hog on board. We finished our last prepared meal last night so the only things in there were luxuries at this point. We can last a couple of days without them being cold. Makes the arrival that much better. Looking like something on Monday at this point. See you soon! Tracy & crew

7/15 update

Yesterday afternoon at 5:30 we made our long anticipated move and jibed south looking for the trades. We sailed just west of south and then we're able to run directly at the finish line (granted, at the time over 600nm away). Since then we've made good speed going almost directly where we want to go. All the models say decent easterly breeze for the next few days, getting us in there late Sunday or early Monday. We'll see what we can do to shorten that! Aloha, Tracy & crew

7/13-14 update

Sorry folks, yesterday was a busy day. We've been pushing the boat as hard as we can in the conditions we have. One of our spinnakers has been up 24/7 the last 5 days. Each day brings a new speed record. Yesterday we hit 14 knots. That record will likely fall before we reach Hawaii. We had a bit of a scare yesterday when the bottom rudder bearing started making unusual noises. We dropped the spinnaker temporarily in order to check it out. We weren't able to definitively determine what was going on, but literally three phone calls got me in touch with the NA distributor, who I originally purchased the bearing from. We diagnosed it to a dry bearing from spending so much time on one tack. We broke into the medical kit and used a syringe to inject soapy water into the bearing. This appears to have cleared up the problem. Phil, at PYI, was also kind enough to follow up with several text messages this morning to confirm everything was okay. In the middle of the Pacific, that's customer service! Yesterday we got passed by two of the late week starters, waved our hellos and they were on their way. We keep jamming along, hoping to make our jibe towards the finish later today, early tomorrow. Aloha, Tracy & crew

7/12/22 update

Good morning! We have spent the last 72+ hours under spinnaker, usually the A2 during the day and the A4 at night. As the winds have allowed we've been trying to point at Hawaii. Sometimes successfully, sometimes not. If conditions continue as forecast for the rest of the day, we will be having our halfway party at dinner tonight. We are all excited to see what Stacy has packed for us! Last night to improve wind speed we went squall chasing and got some good rides, sticking with some squalls for over an hour. The downside? We got pretty wet. We're hoping for good sunshine today to help dry things out. Aloha, Tracy & crew

7/11/22 update

Hi all, we've been moving pretty well yesterday and last night. Pretty slow going today. Our excitement in the last 24 hours was the lashing failing on the low friction ring that holds our tack line for the spinnaker. When did this happen you might ask? At 0230 last night of course. The good news is that I had the insight to add a safety strop around the bow sprit and the tack line. This way the load gets transferred to the strop rather than the bow pulpit (like in 2018). Disaster averted. We got the kite down, replaced the block and got the kite back up in relatively short order and off we went. Things are definitely getting hotter weather wise. Foulies, boots, etc are a thing of the past. Sunscreen, hats, shorts are now the clothing of choice. Half way should be Wednesday (less than 1,035 nm to go) and we hope our pace will pick up from there. Aloha, Tracy & crew

7/10/22 update

Good afternoon everyone,

What to say about yesterday? Let's see, we worked our way through the sail inventory - we went all night with the Code 0, changed to the A2 at 0800, then to the A3 in the early afternoon, followed by the A4 at 0330 last night. We've been running with the A4 since. All smooth changes even in the night with very tired crew. On the wild life side, we haven't seen much lately, not even the ever present flying fish we've seen on previous races. We were contacted via email by the USCG SAR folks asking us o see if we could reach SV Perplexity on our VHF. Unfortunately, while we were probably within hailing distance early in the day, our courses had diverged since and we could no longer raise them. Glad to read in this mornings race news that there is no serious trouble. Looks like Pyewacket will blast by us sometime today but probably too far away for us to see them. We transferred the contents of our dry ice cooler to the refrigerator today and had the still cold, but a bit soft serve, ice cream after lunch. A nice treat on a warm day. That's it for today. Aloha, Tracy & crew.

7/9/22 update

Good morning! Excellent news - we finally have a spinnaker up and are pointing directly at the finish! We spent yesterday still close reaching with either the jib or the Code 0. We ran the Code 0 all night and the wind finally backed enough this morning to put up the A2. Props to the crew that dropped the Code 0 and put up the A2 while I slept through the whole thing! My penalty was to pack the Code 0 when I got up. On the nature side, we were visiting by a pod of dolphins a couple of times yesterday and last night. Sure looked like they had fun swimming around the boat and along the bow wake. We got some good video of that. Winds should continue to build and send us towards Kaneohe. Aloha, Tracy & crew.

7/8/22 update

Good morning! Yesterday was a frustrating day wind wise, especially through mid day. We were never not moving but we were going pretty slow. There are a remarkable number of commercial ships out here just idling before they head to port. All have been very polite to move if need be to let us pass. Always fun to talk to them on the radio. We had completely clear skies and used that to take full advantage of our solar power generation - didn't even need to run the engine to charge batteries last night. The clear sky gave us a knife edge horizon with and outstanding sunset. Mark and I saw our first green flash - it was amazing! Today we'll continue to position ourselves to be in the right place when the northerly wind fills in. Southwest casserole was a hit last night. Love to all. Aloha, Tracy & crew.

7/7/22 update

Hi all,

We had a very nice day and night yesterday. Sunny skies for the most past, although we did have one short rain squall pass overhead. We put the Code 0 up at 0800 and ran with that until 1800. Winds 8-13kts, AWA between 55-75 degrees, making about 7-8 knots. The wind shifted and we had to drop the Code 0 and go with a headsail, but had good breeze in the low double digits, occasionally up to 16 knots and made good speed all night. We were able to put the Code 0 back up this morning around 0730 and ran with that until the wind pretty much shut off around 1000. We bobbed around for a few hours dodging commercial traffic until a light westerly filled in. We've chosen to take that in a just NW direction hoping to avoid a big wind hole in the south and be early to the anticipated northerly breeze when it fills in over the next day or two. The ocean is a beautiful deep blue and we've got perfect conditions for the solar panel to fully charge up our batteries. The food has been great - thanks Cindy! Everyone's doing great and trying to stay up on their sleep (yes, me too!). Love to all. Aloha, Tracy & crew.

7/6/22 update

Hi all,

Just about 24 hours under the keel. We had nice wind for the start and our fleet was well behaved crossing the line. We quickly tacked on to port and headed right out under the Golden Gate Bridge. From there it was pretty slow. We got to about 4nm from the Farallones before we started heading south in the late afternoon. Tons of whales, porpoises, sea lions, etc. Although it was light we kept the boat moving all night and were greeted by nice winds at sunrise. By 1000 this morning though we're back down to low single digit winds again. Everyone is getting used to the watch schedule and we truck along waiting for better wind! Love to all. Tracy & crew

Race tracking

Last Saturday we loaded our return gear (delivery main sail, fuel jugs, some provisioning) on to the shipping container that the PacCup YC will be sending to Kaneohe.  PacCup has published a link to our Yellow Brick trackers.  You can follow the race here:  https://yb.tl/paccup2022.  Optionally, you can get the Yellow Brick app and then add the race once it's listed (the app works pretty well).

The crew and I started our evening weather and routing reviews (via Zoom, what else).  We'll be doing this every night leading up to the start.  Everyone is getting pretty excited.  One week to go!!

blog post email

Hi all - one of our final land-based updates. Start times have been posted and our start is Tuesday, July 5th, at 11:10am. Most equipment has been loaded on the boat and we are finalizing provisioning. The countdown is real now!

Final practice race in the books.

Last Saturday we completed our final practice race, the OYRA crewed Farallones race, before we head off to Hawaii.  While it was a beautiful, mostly clear day, on the ocean - the one thing we could have used more of was wind.  The forecast SW breeze didn't fill in until the middle of the afternoon, and even then it was barely over 10kts.  It took us over 6 hours to make it out the SE Farallon Island, but it was pretty much a straight shot back with a southerly breeze that was a bit too far forward to set the spinnaker.  As the wind bent to go under the Golden Gate bridge we could set the spinnaker at about Pt. Bonita and carry it to the finish line.  There were three of us sailing some pretty high apparent wind angles with our spinnakers to get across the finish line.  We left the dock at 0730 and got back at 2200.  A long day!

You can see the race video here:  https://youtu.be/X--o25DytpA

Next up will be the 2022 Pacific Cup Race.  Our start will be Tuesday, July 5th, at 1110.  We're nailing down all the provisioning to be loaded onto the boat in a few weeks.  I've got a test going with our new cooler (a COSTCO knockoff of a Yeti cooler) to see how long dry ice will last.

Next posts likely from the race!!

SMS from 881652432398@msg.iridium.com

Test post via text

2nd PacCup practice race in the books

 As noted in our last post, this past weekend we competed in the OYRA Duxship race.  32nm out the Gate, up to Duxbury Reef light, then to the SF approach buoy, and back.  The day started with a nice 8-10 kt breeze inside the bay, which got all the boats out under the Golden Gate Bridge.  There we encountered a thick fog bank with very limited visibility.  After hugging the south shore to get out the Gate, most boats then headed to the north shore outside the Gate to avoid the worst of the flood current.  Unfortunately, as we approached Pt. Bonita and the fog cleared, the wind started dropping to the mid single digits and the boats started parking in the light winds and strong current.  We decided to avoid that mess and headed further out the entrance channel, where we were eventually able to bear away and set our A3 reaching spinnaker.  This setup work well for a while until the wind dropped to the low single digits and we abandoned the kite.  We then bobbed around waiting for the sea breeze to fill in - which it finally did in the +/- 15 kt range, with some steep wind waves to contend with.  We did our best to stay on the favored tack all the way to Duxbury where we rounded and then power reached towards the SF buoy, through in a gybe and started heading back to the Gate.  At that point the wind was too far forward to fly the kite, but we were making 10+ kts straight back staying just north of the entrance channel.  By the time we reached the last entrance channel markers the wind had backed enough to set the A4.  We gybed near Pt. Bonita to avoid what looked to be a big wind hole ahead and ran over toward Baker beach where we gybed again.  Our final gybe was just outside the Golden Gate bridge giving us a good angle to the finish (at least that was the plan).  Inside the Gate winds were in the high 20's with gusts to 30.  We could see several boats with spinnakers struggling to stay on their feet.  Just ahead of us a trimaran lost control of their spinnaker and was parked in our path.  We didn't feel we could safely carry the kite up wind of them and sailing below them would make it difficult to lay the finish line.  We decided the best course of action was to douse the kite and power reach the short distance to the finish - which we did.  6 hours 32 minutes round trip, using most of our sail inventory.

You can see the race video here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weVbm7GGJC4&ab_channel=TracyRogers

We're slowing starting to load on our PacCup gear.  This race we had the solar panel installed.  We plan to have the dodge installed for our last practice race out to the Farallon Islands early next month.  We are deep into the provisioning process as the BIG race is less then two months away!

1st ocean race in preparation for PacCup

This past weekend 3 or our 4 crew participated in the OYRA Lightship race. This ocean race is about 25.2nm from the St. Francis YC out to the SF approach buoy and back. Conditions were lumpy to say the least due to high offshore winds leading up to the weekend. Winds for the day were 7-10 kts at the start building to about 12 kts as we approached the buoy. As the sea breeze filled in, winds built to mid-teens, and then low 20's as we came under the Golden Gate Bridge. The weather couldn't have been nicer and we had a nice ebb to help us on the way out and a flood to bring us back. This was perfect practice for PacCup because it also starts at StFYC and takes us out the Gate and along the approach channel. We also had a nice longish spinnaker run back (which we'll be doing a lot of on PacCup).

You can see the video of the race here:  https://youtu.be/cK-d0oEDGok

Next month's practice race will be the Duxship Race: StFYC start, out the gate, up to Duxbury Reef mark, over to the SF approach buoy, and back.  At 32nm, a bit longer than last weekend's race and another opportunity to fine-tune our crew. Our final practice race will be the Farallones race (58nm) in early June and then it's what we've been waiting for: PacCup (2,070nm) in early July!  

PacCup 2022 Inspection Complete!

This past Saturday we completed our Pacific Cup Equipment Requirements inspection - and passed (of course).  For those that aren't familiar, the race has a long list of safety related equipment requirements. The good news is that we had to get all this stuff for the 2018 race so it was mostly a matter of digging it all out of my shed at home and taking it to the boat. Setting up all the safety equipment on the boat was a good exercise, especially for our two new crew members.

                                                                        Storm sails

Alternate means of displaying sail number

Reviewing the list with our inspector

PFDs, tethers, knives, flashlights, re-arm kits

The whole process with our inspector took about 45 minutes. It's nice to have this required activity checked off the list. We spent the rest of the afternoon out on the water practicing person overboard recoveries and testing out the emergency rudder.  Videos of these activities can be found on YouTube. Next up John and I will overhauling our steering system cables and then it's ocean races the next three months (one/month) leading up to the start of the Pacific Cup the week of July 4th.  Three months away!!

We're back....  It has been a minute since I last posted on the blog.  But, we're now four months out from this summer's race

and activity is ramping up.  Due to COVID and vaccination requirements for the race, we had to make a "last minute" crew change near the end of 2021.  After casting around for crew replacements we found two excellent options and decided to take them both and increase our total crew from 3 to 4.  We've been spending the last few practice sessions getting the new guys familiar with the boat, POB practice, exposure to the emergency steering process, and provisioning discussions.  The boat is currently over at KKMI getting the bottom painted and we needed to get a rig inspection (thanks Ben @ Easom Rigging) for our insurance company.  We replaced the standing rigging 2 years ago in preparation for the 2020 race (that didn't happen), but they wanted an inspection anyway.  We've also been in discussions with the PCYC technical committee regarding our downwind rating and whether we'd get placed in the PHRF or ORR fleets (turns out we're right on the cutoff for going one way or the other).  Based on a desire to race with boats that look "more like us", we petitioned to be in the PHRF fleet, and just recently PCYC approved our request.  This also means starting earlier in the week (probably Tuesday or Wednesday, July 5th or 6th).  Once the boat's back from the yard we've got several practice ocean races in April, May, and June.  The last will be the OYRA Farallones race, where we plan to have the boat in full PacCup mode (dodger, solar panel, etc.).  This will be an excellent "dry run" for the start of PacCup (except we'll turn back after rounding SE Farallon Island). 

That's it for now.  Lots of details to work on over the next four month, which, undoubtedly will go by in a flash.  I'll leave you with a shot of the new crew out practicing.