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.
Thursday, July 7, 2022
Wednesday, July 6, 2022
7/6/22 update
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
Tuesday, June 28, 2022
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!!
Friday, June 17, 2022
blog post email
Friday, June 10, 2022
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!!
Monday, May 16, 2022
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!