One week later…

Ok, I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to actually sit down at a computer and write a few words about the trip.  I’m just going to try to start at the beginning and see how far I get before dinner’s ready….  This might take a few days.

SO, pre start, the weather was definitely weird.   All my friends who had done multiple PacCups before were starting to freak out.   Nothing was normal, there was this strange low hanging off the coast, and we’d be starting in a Southerly.  Nothing like the average upwind for the first 18 hours, start to crack off, set a kite and sail to Hawaii.   Routing software was telling us to go out the Gate and turn Right.   This was definitely uncharted territory…   Drakes Bay on the first night?   Weird.   So Andy and I talked about it and decided we didn’t want to commit to following any routing software word for word, especially since the polars we were using were sketchy to say the least.   Basically, we decided that the first leg would just be a race to the wind on the other side of the low, and we would just have to sail the boat as fast as possible in a generally north-west direction and who knew where that would put us.

So prestart, I’ve never felt so sick in my entire life.  I could have puked on the dock that morning.   I was so nervous, and scared about being in charge and responsible for a boat and someone else…  It was ugly.   But we got out there, had enough time for me to throw my halfway present to Skip and Jody and started thinking about the start.  I was about a minute late, there was no need to be anywhere near the line and all those bigger boats that go upwind so much better than us.   I made some comment about how if we lost by a minute it would be my fault and Andy said something about how many more thousands of chances we’d have to lose by a minute and off we went.

As soon as we were out the gate the breeze started to die and we started to take out reefs and off we went on port, up the coast.  That first night we passed the N Farralones to port and kept going N…  it was light but we had the 3 up and were moving… lots and lots of phosphorescence and dolphins.   The next day was brutally light…   We ended up with the zero up just to slat along…   I was psyched to keep the boat moving 2-3 knots, and it was just absolutely glassy all day.    One of the things I’ve been most worried about is how I’ll deal mentally with light wind offshore, and this was a pretty positive experience.   I found that if I sailed from bucket to bucket, I was able to stay pretty happy… passing things made it all seem a lot better.   There were tons of teeny tiny man o war jellyfish, and I startled a sea lion and I could see him diving down under the boat soooooo deep…

The next few nights and days all blur together…  light wind, just trying to keep the boat moving, watching Trunk Monkey.  They were ahead, but not uncatchable, and we weren’t getting passed up yet, so things were looking good.   The nights were unbelievably dark.   There was a solid marine layer and no moon and we couldn’t see anything.  At all.   Then one afternoon I woke up from a nap and the sun was out.  I came up and Andy announced that we’d gotten to the trades, and were in Squall Commander land and off we went.     That first night of breeze we kept the 3 up, thinking, well, this is fast, and slightly scary, but working…    It was noon the next day before we started crashing.   We were totally spent from driving like fools all night in the pitch black going 14 knots, totally underwater the entire time.    We couldn’t figure out what had changed, why we were suddenly pitchpoling left and right, but I guess it’s time to put up the 5.    We felt like total fools.    The 5 meant that we were maintaining faster speeds, were no longer totally under water and it was about 50,000 times easier to drive.  Lesson learned.

And that was the next 4 days.   Mostly one reef, 5 and blasting along at 14 knots.   I wished I had a mask and snorkel most of the time, but somehow the boat was pretty dry down below.   We got in a good rhythm of go down below, head to the low side, take off your gear, leave it in the puddle, climb to the high side and snuggle in.   We were doing 3 on 3 off and it worked out really well.   I was eating tons, the Mountain House freeze dried food we had was totally awesome.   The lasagna with meat sauce, oh wow, I would eat that at home.  My hands really hurt a lot, the joints were totally painful and even though I was soaking them in fresh water, they weren’t getting much better.   I got into the push-me-pull-you routine of driving- one hand pushing, one hand looped onto the extension doing the pulling.    Driving at night was like going down one of those pitch black tube slides at the water park, with someone spraying a firehose up at you, while doing pull ups.   It was very full on, and very, very awesome.    I tried to keep listening to music or books on tape or whatever, but if I put the iPod on shuffle, I definitely never had an extra hand to change tracks.   I ended up listening to an hour of french verb conjugations, and Andy got stuck with an hour and a half of Hawaiian steel guitar at one point…    And I will never go offshore on that boat again without one of those camel pack water backpack thingies.    Sitting there looking at a water bottle on a sheet bag, just wishing I could get to it….

We decided to never hook up the auto pilot unless we had to.   I wanted to be able to feel the boat more and really get it dialed.    Now of course I wish that I knew that the pilot worked, but at the same time, I have a much better idea of what works in terms of sail plans, and it was really really exciting to find that once we’d get it dialed, that boat just wanted to go in one direction at top speed and as long as you steered 140 true, or whatever it happened to be, you’d be going 15 knots. If you went 139, you’d fall off, 141, no go.   So now I know that a pilot should be able to drive the thing as long as I can get it set up right…

One of the other amazing things about this boat was that we weren’t surfing.   We were just planing.  Down one wave, up the next charging without looking back.    Over, under, through waves without any hesitation.   This boat WANTED to get to Hawaii as soon as possible.    And suddenly we were the boat closest to Hawaii.   A little mini was leading the whole fleet.     It’s funny how quickly expectations can change…   We went into the race thinking that it’d be cool to finish and learn about the boat and get things going.   Then suddenly we were leading the fleet and we were all excited about winning.   We put in a 274 mile day and we got so driven to just keep pushing and get there first…

Anyway, gotta go lie on a couch and watch some TV but I’ll get back to the computer tomorrow and try to cover the rest of the race..  today we sailed 420s to the sand bar and got to see the Black Pearl sail in (they’re filming a new Pirates of the Caribbean movie here) and just played in the water  all day with some of the other double handers and it was wonderful.  But now it’s couch time.

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