Early October update

We made it to the west coast!  Pasha finally got Hokulani shipped to San Diego (thank you pacific hurricane season!).  She's now transferred to the trailer that will be taking her up the coast to KKMI's boat yard in Richmond.  ETA next Monday, October 15th - 72 days since I left her at Keehi marine's dock in Hawaii.  It's felt like a REALLY long time.

Late September update

Well, our worries over the pacific hurricanes came to pass - Pasha's shipping schedule was negatively impacted.  As a result the new ETA for the boat to arrive in San Diego is now October 2nd.  For those counting, that's two weeks behind schedule.  Hopefully she'll arrive here locally early the week of October 8th.  Other than a new low spinning off the Baja peninsula later this week the path from Hawaii to San Diego looks clear.  Fingers crossed!

Early September update

Keehi Marine Center pulled the boat last Friday and loaded her on the trailer that had arrived from the mainland earlier in the week.  Unfortunately, hurricane Lane closed the port for a couple of days so they're a bit backed up and won't be able to accept the boat until tomorrow.  So, she gets trucked to the port tomorrow where she'll wait for the Pasha ship that's scheduled to sail eastbound on the 11th.  That said there are two hurricanes (Norman and Olivia) currently heading west towards the islands.  Norman is forecast to track just north and east of Hawaii - but right through the path the ship would take to the mainland.  Should be through before the ship leaves.  Olivia is still pretty far east from Hawaii so it's a bit early to tell her track.  Let's hope she doesn't cause any delays. (see the forecast map below).

These "low boy" trailers are nice because the keep the overall loaded height as low as possible and they have racks to load the mast on the side of the trailer (rather than on top of the boat as is common in most "standard" boat trailers).

West coast here we come....

Friday's forecast - that's Norman close to Hawaii and Olivia further east.  Yikes!

Pics from the sail around Oahu

Here are a few pics from our sail from Kaneohe to Honolulu. The first is passing the Transpac race finish line. You can see the buoy in the foreground and the Diamond Head light up on the hill. Diamond Headbis in sight as we round the corner and then Waikiki from a few miles offshore. While the first part of the sail was a white knuckler it was much more civilized from Diamond Head to the marine center.

Getting ready to ship home

We're committed to ship the boat home. After moving the boat to the Honolulu side yesterday we started taking things apart to get the boat ready to ship. Today we finished that up and pulled the mast. The mast is now nicely wrapped up and on the hard. The boat is completely stripped and ready to load on a trailer. Unfortunately the trailer won't get to Hawaii until August 27th. As soon as it gets there the yard will haul the boat and strap it on the trailer. The mast will go on racks on the side of the trailer. Then off to Pasha for the ride to the West coast. We hope to see her back in the Bay Area mid-September.

John, Aaron, and I moved the boat to the other side today.  Small craft advisories in effect but, unfortunately, we are on a schedule and while it would have been nice to wait for better weather that could be several days.  The trades started really blowing yesterday afternoon and got stronger over night.  By the time we left the dock at 0715 this morning it was already blowing in the low 20’s and built from there.  We saw 25-35 most of the day with seas 15-20’.  Close reach motor sailing with a reefed main until we got near Makapu and could reach off a bit.  With reefed main alone we were hitting 10-14 knots surfing down the waves.  Definitely spirited sailing and the most water washing over the decks ever.  It will go down as the gnarliest sailing conditions I’ve ever been in.  Made Farallones races look tame.  Once we got around Diamond Head the waves let up but the winds were still high 20’s.

We did pass right by the Diamond Head buoy, lining it up with the Diamond Head lighthouse to unofficially finish the Transpac race.  That was fun.  8 hours after leaving Kaneohe YC we were safely at Ke’ehi Marine center and got most of the work done to prepare for haul out.  Safety gear removed, emergency rudder gear removed, vang and boom removed, solar panel removed, radar post removed.  It’s getting crowded below deck.  We have a bit more work to get things ready tomorrow and then the boat will be in wait mode for a trailer to arrive from the west coast.  It looks like Pasha (the shipping company) is showing us some love and hopes to get a trailer on an earlier west bound ship.  Hopefully Hokulani won’t be waiting too long....

I’ll be leaving Saturday and will be leaving the boat In the hands of the marine center to finish the boat loading.  Once the boat is on the west coast (likely San Diego), I’ve got trucking arranged to get her to the boat yard in Richmond.  Fingers crossed for mid-September....

Status update post race

Hi all,

We've now caught up on our sleep and adjusted to life back on land. Half the crew is back on the mainland and John and I are still here in Hawaii making plans to get the boat home. Due to the damage to the bow pulpit and deck we need to make repairs. The only question is whether to make the repairs here in Hawaii or at home. If we make them here it will likely be over a month before repairs are completed and then I have. delivery crew issues and I've got other commitments at the end of August and in September. Logistically it becomes a real pain. The other option is to ship the boat home and I've been busy chasing that down over the past few days. Also not without its own logistical challenges, I need to coordinate the boat yard, trailer rental, shipping, and trucking activities - but hey, one more challenge to overcome! Assuming this all works out I'll post pics of our sail over to the Honolulu side and our preparation for shipping activity. Stay tuned....

Mixing it up at the start

Some pictures from the race start on July 12th. Seems like ages ago...

Chill’n in Kaneohe

Catching our breath at KYC.

The one that didn’t get away

I mentioned earlier on the blog that we caught a fish the last day. Here are the details - about a 10 pound mahimahi. Cris filleted it up on our custom cutting board that fits in the top of our e-rudder cassette. We were busy trying to get to the finish line so we put it in the fridge and then served it up at the dock after we finished. Soooo good.

Awards hardware

Our bling from last night's awards dinner - best prepared yacht. It definitely felt like a part time job preparing the boat these past 18 months.

Finished!

Lots of details to follow, but we made it. Finished yesterday just after 7pm Hawaii time. It took to the last day, but we did catch a fish - we had super fresh mahimahi sashimi once we made it to the dock. What an experience - glad to be here. BTW 13 days, 8 hours, 16 minutes.

Aloha,

Tracy and crew

Tuesday adendum

Hi all,

We kept working the problem like Matt Damon in The Martian and came up with a solution for our damaged bow sprit (pic attached). A fixed strop for the tack corner, no tack line to potentially damage our compromised bow pulpit. A2 spinnaker back up again!!! Winds permitting looking like late Wednesday arrival - we're 180 nm out.

Aloha,

Tracy and crew

Mon/Tues update

Not a lot to tell here. Life is pretty boring slogging along with a smallish jib winged out. A boat like ours, a J120, is designed to go down wind with a large spinnaker. Since our bowsprit is out of operation that's not an option for us. To get a boat that weighs around 14,000 lbs up and moving down wind we need over 15 knots of wind - in short supply currently. You may have noticed some zig zag tracks yesterday when we tried to find reaching angles that would give us better speeds but the wind angles didn't take us any closer to our destination. So it's back to wing and wing -slow going. The only good news is that this is a pretty bomb proof sail plan. So when the usual squalls came through last night we welcomed them as they brought strong winds - no problem for our set up. Still fishing, still not catching. Some sea birds have spotted our lures and have started dive bombing them. That not something you see every day. Lots of awesome rainbows to view after the squalls. Looks like expected arrival some time on Thursday. We push on...

Aloha,

Tracy and crew

Sunday status update

Hi all,

Well we've got things all cleaned up. The bow pulpit is now secure and realigned so that it doesn't interfere with the jib furler. Life lines have been readjusted to work as intended. The repaired whisker pole (mentioned in an earlier post has worked prefects with the blast reacher. While it would be nice to have a spinnaker up we have not come up with a safe way to do so - we've explored some crazy ideas but have rejected them all. So, we are resigned to our limited sail plan and will make our best possible time over the next, now less than 500 miles. We've still got fishing lines out but so far no luck. Three of us have now been hit by large flying fish - I'm pretty sure the fish are winning this battle.

Aloha,

Tracy and crew

Saturday update Sunday status

Hi all,

Well it would be an understatement to say that Saturday was a hard day for us yet amongst to trials were some successes. I'll lead it's the big news - late last night after a mostly good day of spinnaker flying the fitting on our bow sprit that holds the tack line failed. With the tack no longer held at the end of the sprit the load was very quickly transferred to the bow pulpit which is not designed for that purpose. The bolt holding the front starboard side of the pulpit was sheared off at the deck. The other three attachment points were pulled away from the deck and the entire structure tweaked aft. In a word it's a mess. We have some work to do today to reduce water ingress when waves wash over this area (we are NOT sinking). We will be finishing the race using white sails alone. Earlier yesterday we also folded our whisker pole winging out the genoa. With some mcguyvering we were able to cut away the bent part and transfer the end connector to the remaining pole. While now much shorter it should work fine with the blast reacher. This will be our down wind mode once we clear up the bow area. On the lighter side, yesterday morning we had a long series of rain storms come through and some of the crew chose to take a natural shower. As I write this we have 576 miles to the finish and winds appear to be holding steady (finally). If we can keep the boat moving that would put us in late Wednesday or early Thursday. Wish us luck.

Aloha,

Tracy and crew

Friday update

Hi all,

Hot, mostly blue skies, deep blue water - the only thing we're missing is the strong trade winds. Winds early in the day are sub 10 knots and so far in the afternoon they've been in the low to mid teens. We can only seem to find stronger winds near small squalls. However, we keep trying to get the most out of the boat. Unless we see more consistent trades throughout the days ahead are arrival will be delayed. We're aiming for the shortest possible course, we just need the winds to cooperate! The same can be said for the fish. We've had lines out each day and so far our catch consists of some netting. Not sure that goes so well with wasabi.

Aloha,

Tracy and crew

Thursday update part 2

Hi again,

Just to expand on my earlier post, we've finally hit "Pacific Cup conditions" - sunny, hot, deep blue water, downwind sailing in big breeze for mile after mile. It's why sailors do this race. To have it come on the day of our half way party made I even more special. We've got lots of pics and video, but most of that will have to wait until we get to Hawaii and have real broadband. We hope everyone is enjoying following us and we hope to be to Kaneohe by Monday or Tuesday.

Aloha,

Tracy and crew

Thursday update

Hi all,

As promised, the A2 went back up today and we've been charging all day. We also hit our half way mark today and celebrated by opening our surprise box. Lots of fun stuff, thanks everyone. Pics of those clothes will have to wait until I have more free time. We'll keep on trucking...

Aloha, Tracy and crew

Wednesday update

Hi all,
Sorry this is a bit late, we've been a little busy, it all started with a kiss. Yes, early Tuesday evening a squid flew out of the ocean and smacked John square on the neck. He described he encounter as "slimy - like a mucus ball from Ghostbusters". Later around 2300 hours we got caught sailing too low with the A2 in big breeze. We ended up with the worst spinnaker/head foil wrap I've ever seen. We spent the next two hours trying to clear it but to no avail. We were able to wind the kite up sufficiently so that it was under control and sailed on under main alone until daylight. Once we could see what was going on it was clear the only way to fix the situation was to send someone up the mast. John volunteered. Just over an hour later we had the kite recovered. Climbing the mast is one thing, doing it at sea is a whole different ballgame. Great job by John and the rest of the crew to pull this off safely. Exhausted from the night and morning activity we decided to spend the rest of the day wing-on-wing with white sails. I'm sure our YB tracker looks interesting during recovery. Tomorrow it's back up with a kite and likely our halfway party.
Aloha,
Tracy and crew

Sun!!!

The sun finally came out today and we were able to get out of our foulies. Soooo much better!

Tuesday update

Hi all,

We had our first (of hopefully many) 200 nm days over the past 24 hours! Actually 200 on the nose. It's nice to be in the wind and have a spinnaker up. We ran the A3 all of yesterday afternoon and well into the night before the wind got to shifty to make sailing with only two crew on deck practical. First light this morning the wind had backed a bit more and we decided to start banking some southerly direction and put up the A2 and have been cruising along with it since. We had an unexpected visitor in the cockpit last night when an 8" flying fish flew up and hit Mike in the back of the leg while he was at the wheel. The fish then proceeded to flop all over the cockpit trying to escape before I was able to grab it and sent it back to the sea. A bit of excitement at 3 in the morning. We also had our ice cream after dinner last night. While not "firm" by any description, it did hold its shape on the spoon, was cold, and tasted great. Quite a treat where we are located - thanks Cindy! Fishing line out again this morning hoping we'll get lucky. A couple of more boat maintenance items came up this morning and they're dealt with for now. Crew is all good as we're just cycling through the watch schedule.

Aloha,

Tracy and crew

ps. Glad we have AIS on board as we are often tracking 15+ tankers and cargo ships the last few days. Fortunately most pass us well over 5 miles away (but that feels close in this big ocean).

Monday update

Hi all,

We had our best day yet yesterday - covering 194 nm directly at Hawaii from 8am Sunday to 8am Monday. Unfortunately still overcast and cool, which means still foul weather gear and not much solar panel production. This morning we moved the contents of our dry ice cooler to the refrigerator and just in time. The dinners were still nicely frozen but the ice cream we packed is now soft serve. I know, life is tough... We buried it in the still frozen dinners in hopes to firm it up a bit, but it looks like we'll be having it for lunch. Fishing line out again this morning but we're still pretty far north to get our hopes up, but you never know! Boat and crew are well and we just continue to reach along awaiting the forecasted wind shift that we'll allow us to put up a spinnaker.

Aloha,

Tracy & crew

ps. A3 up, surfing to Hawaii at 14 kts

Day 3 update

Well, I've got to tell you, synoptic winds are nice! It took us 53 hours but we finally found them and have turned to sail directly towards Hawaii and made good progress over the past 15 hours or so. Winds are forecast to build over the next 24 hours and eventually shift to the NE which will allow us to get a spinnaker up. In the meantime we keep blast reaching along at 8-10 knots. Did I mention we added a few more sail changes yesterday? We are now up to 8 for the race. Our daily boat inspections have found some work to attend to. The port primary winch was starting to get noisy so we took it apart and added some winch grease - problem solved. We had to drop the genoa to repair some tears - we like sticky back! This morning we noticed that a sheave in the outhaul purchase failed (as in many pieces) which wouldn't allow us to sufficiently flatten the main. We were able to mcguyver a work around. Probably need to replace that block in Hawaii before we head home. Crew moral is good especially now that we've found the wind and are tracking towards Hawaii. Southwestern casserole was awesome last night - thanks Cindy! Oh yeah, today we put out the trolling line for the first time - nothing yet. We encountered a few commercial vessels and had a nice radio conversation with one that passed behind us about 3 nm away. That's it for now, we'll just keep truck'n away. Hi to everyone ashore.

Aloha,

Tracy & crew

Day 2 update

Hi all,

Well there's no nice way to describe last night. It was cold and wet with light winds. We continued to work our way up and over the pesky low pressure system parked off the coast - not the best way to start a race to Hawaii. This morning we decided we've done what we can do to avoid the worst of it and made out turn southwest. The wind should fill this afternoon and start to shift right allowing us to work back down towards the great circle route over the next few days. We haven't had much sun so the solar panel hasn't been able to keep up with our demand so we've been shutting down non-critical electronics to conserve power (sorry to those who've been following our AIS track - silent mode now). Looks like we'll be running the engine more to keep our batteries charged until we get better sun conditions. Cheesy pasta was a huge hit last night - thanks Cindy! Crew is well and watches going smoothly. Looking forward to the position reports later this morning to see how the rest of our division faired overnight. Hopefully we'll have better wind to report tomorrow.

Aloha,

Tracy and crew

About 24 hours in

Hi all, we're just about 24 hours in and about 110 nm west of the start. We had a few pretty slow stretches last night trying to get over the low parked off the coast. Four boats in our division still remain in sight of each other reaching Westish to get to the northerlies. So far five sail changes: #2 to the genoa, genoa to the code 0, code 0 back to genoa, genoa back to code 0, and finally back to the genoa again. I'm hoping our next change will be to a spinnaker in the northerlies, but unfortunately that may have to wait until tomorrow. Crew is all settled into our watch schedules and we're looking forward to cheesy pasta tonight.

Aloha,

Tracy & crew

first night out

First night out dinner - ginger chicken with rice. And, of course dessert. Yes, as forecast winds are very light. We are getting set for a slow night.

Tracy & crew

Crew ready to go

Tracy, John, Cris and Mike ready to go.

Vacuum packed!

We used space bags to save some space with our backup spinnakers. Works pretty well.

Almost ready to go

We're in the final days prior to our start. Just working on some last prep details and loading provisions and sails on board. We've got the "for sure we'll be using these" sails on board today and are waiting for the latest weather forecast to determine what additional sails we'll load tomorrow.

Lists and more lists! We now have lists of the provisions on board posted where they are stored.

For those wondering what we eat, here's the menu.  If we're out more than 14 days, then were into the freeze dried food.

Starting to get cozy....

Hi all - we're only a few days out from our start.  Today the crew brought all their gear to the boat and we activated our YB tracker (you can see us if you click on the position/tracker button at the top of the Pacific Cup website).  We serviced both primary winches to make sure they were operating in top shape.  I climbed into my wetsuit and cleaned the bottom of the boat and checked the zincs (they were fine).  John and I also verified that the head discharge was working properly (don't ask).  Turns out the labels on the Y-valve were backwards!  Better to find out now than a few days into the race.  Cris installed our super-custom fish cleaning board that fits into the top of our emergency rudder cassette.  I'll get a picture of that on here soon - we may have discovered a new business opportunity....

For the next few days we'll be pouring over the weather data trying to determine the best route to take and which sails to have on board for the forecast conditions.  Almost time to go!

Spinnaker Cup video

Video footage from our final tune up before the Pacific Cup race.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5T5PDsBifE

Practice on Spinnaker Cup

The crew continued practice on Spinnaker Cup this weekend. Great downwind run with Mike claiming the Rocket Club prize with 17.6 kts.

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ORR rating stuff

As with most sailboat races, the Pacific Cup race uses a handicap system to accommodate the large variety of boats that participate in the race.  Most of the SF Bay local races are handicapped using PHRF (Performance Handicap Racing Fleet).  You submit a form with measurements of your boat and sails to the local YRA office and they issue your PHRF rating, both upwind and downwind.  You can do these measurements yourself and/or use published data from the manufacturer.  PacCup being a mostly downwind race uses your boat's downwind rating.  Unfortunately, or fortunately depending how you look at it, our boat is too fast downwind and below the rating cutoff to participate in PHRF divisions.  As a result we are required to race in an ORR (Offshore Racing Rule) division.  While PHRF and ORR are "managed" by US Sailing, ORR is much more detailed in the measurement process requiring the services of a US Sailing certified measurer for the boat and the sails.  I was able to get our sails (main, largest head sail, and largest spinnaker) measured at a local sail loft and they provided the official US Sailing measurement forms.  The boat measurements were a bit more complicated.  We had to take the boat over the Richmond marina to have an "incline" performed on the boat.

Our local US Sailing measurer taking overhand measurements.

Outriggers installed and then weights added to calculate the boat's righting angle (sound like black magic math to me).  The inboard ends of the outriggers are up against stanchions and the outboard ends are held by halyards.  Weights are then added to the end of the outrigger to heel the boat.  They have a water filled tube running from side to side on the boat to measure level and heel.

This was phase one.  Later we had to take the boat over to Berkeley marina to have the boat weighed and the underwater appendages (prop, shaft, and strut) measured.  Fortunately, the race holds weighing events where they schedule multiple boats to maximize use of the travel lift and I-frame with the weight sensor.  Once again, like we did for the incline, we had to remove everything from the boat.  To get the I-frame that holds the weight sensor and the straps that fit under the boat positioned properly we had to remove the backstay. 

We pretty much had to max out the lift on the travel lift to get the boat completely out of the water (sorry didn't get a picture of that).  As it was about an inch of the bulb on the bottom of the keel was still in the water - although as the tide was rapidly falling, it wasn't long until the entire boat was clear of the water.

Getting the final measurements of the prop, shaft, and strut.

The final number?  14,297.2 pounds.  That's 397 pounds more than J-Boats published weight for a J120.  All this data now gets sent to US Sailing who will then issue our certified ORR rating.  Once we have that we can forward that form to our local PHRF office and they will issue a certified PHRF rating as well.  FINALLY, all that get's submitted to the PacCup race committee and based on the other boats entered they can determine race divisions.  Once we're in a divsion we'll know our start date - likely July 11th give or take.  Five months to go!