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Shorthanded Racing in San Francisco Bay

2002 TRANSPAC News and Position Reports

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Thursday June 20

A second note received from Mark today, see below...

0900 hours radio check in

via SailMail from Steve Wilson on board Westerly

Nice 15 knot winds most of last night. 10 knots this morning with light rain. Time to do some housekeeping. Westerly is now further offshore than on any previous trips. Celebrated last night with another piece of my wife's excellent Lasagne. The instruments indicate that it is well over my head so I'd better stay close to the boat on my morning swims.

Interesting that the slower boats went south of the faster boats. I went farther south than I had intended when I saw the High so far down and did not want to spend my family vacation time in Hawaii spinning around off LA.

YachtLatitudeLongitudeDTFNotes
Rusalka30.38136.001358
Alchera29.18137.021285
Tease29.15135.061383
Endangered Species31.21135.551375
Seabird30.06135.581351
Zapped  did not check in
Westerly29.14134.011439
Haulback29.19133.331463
DTF = distance to finish, nautical miles

2100 hours radio check in

courtesy of Steve Wilson on Westerly

We are going to to come up on 8A (8.294 MHz) tomorrow.

YachtLatitudeLongitudeDTFNotes
Rusalka30.25137.301279
Alchera28.22138.201205
Tease29.06136.431298
Endangered Species30.44137.041307
Seabird29.45137.231274
Zapped   did not check in
Westerly28.50135.281359
Haulback28.42134.461393
DTF = distance to finish, nautical miles

morning note from Mark Deppe on board Alchera

[Editor's Note: Audacious is skippered by Carl Eshelman, a longtime member of the SSS. He's out with the fleet (but not racing) as he simply enjoys the sailing.]

Alchera Log 6/20/02 0640 hours
Position N29 24 W136 50

Even the military can't change the laws of physics. Audacious had an interesting encounter yesterday. Seems he was minding his own business when a fleet of mysterious military ships appeared, headed directly for him. Audacious was hailed and told to keep his clearance from the fleet and to get out of the way. He responded that he would be happy to, but he could only go as fast as 5 knots. Apparently the fleet decided to divert at that point.

It's become standard during check-in to ask Audacious if he's caught any fish yet. No fish yet.

Yesterday on Alchera was spent dialed back somewhat, flying the twin jibs and catching up on some much needed sleep. For the first time I allowed myself to sleep in one and two hour segments instead of 20 minutes. The radar alarm seems to be working pretty well, and it has picked up the occasional passing ship long before I need to worry about it. So I felt somewhat comfortable sleeping longer for a change. It felt good and I feel recharged.

I was also able to successfully fold my 95% jib inside the cabin. The technique involves starting with the sail bunched up on one side of the cabin, and trying to move it back and forth from side to side in progessively neater bundles. The trick is to leave a tunnel under the sail while this is being done, so that you can climb under it to get to both sides. After 4 iterations of this, I ended up with a relatively neatly folded sail. Amazing. It still took an hour though.

Funny how simple tasks out here seem to be measured in terms of hours instead of minutes. Westerly put up her twin jibs yesterday, and it was a 2 and a half hour job. That's a record. It took Alchera and Rusalka three hours to do this. Westerly, by the way, set a new personal record for his longest singlehanded voyage yesterday. Seabird managed to wrap his spinnaker again, and seemed to be totally disgusted with it, leaving it lying wet on the floor of the forepeak 'where it **ing belonged', or words to that effect, you can never be quite sure listening to the Silly Sideband Radio. Rusalka put up his half ounce spinnaker and blew it up, but didn't seemed to be very concerned since he has plenty. I think he gets them on a roll and just rips one off when he needs it.

The light is just now breaking and it's a bit cold and misty outside. There are rain clouds around me, but I haven't been hit directly as yet. Not enough wind to my liking, only around 16 knots out of 44 degrees true, so around 10 knots relative with the boat moving 7-8. I'll need to decide today whether to keep flying the twins or get more aggressive. We'll see where the rest of the fleet is at check-in. Unfortunately, the relative wind is pointing straight at Kauai, dead downwind right now, and J120's with their sprit mounted asymmetric spinnakers don't do deep downwind very well. On the other hand, you can't beat twins for going deep downwind, but they're not as fast. Hmmm.

- Alchera

afternoon note from Mark

Alchera Log 6/20/02 1317 hours
Position N29 00 W137 31

Nice wind so far today, 15-18 out of the NE. Alchera is running under twin 125s going 7-8 knots with surfs up to 10. The waves here are not yet really very big, only 2-3 feet. Should be lots of fun later on down the run when they build up.

I've never flown twin 'butterfly' jibs before, so I've spent the day learning how to rig and trim them, and I think I've got them dialed in now. I've got poles on both sides, with the ends of the poles led through the sheet bowlines in the clews of the sail. I thought I could get away without any other lines, but after watching them and trying to trim them, came to the conclusion that downhauls were really needed as well. The upwind pole really needs to be let forward without having the pole 'sky', and the downwind pole needs to come back without tensioning the leech too much.

Unfortunately, only one of my poles had a downhaul bridle, so I cut up some vectran I had brought to use as an emergency shroud, and made a bridle out of that. Great stuff, vectran cord. Love the way you can tie knots in it. Hope I don't need to use it as a shroud now, because it's no longer long enough!

So now my spinnaker lines are being used as downhauls to adjust the pole height, and it's all working pretty well.

Disaster was averted by a narrow margin when during the course of all this rigging I noticed the lower bolt of the vang had worked its way almost completely out, and was hanging on by only a thread. That would have been a major problem had that given way, because the lower pulley and support for the tackle would have gone flying into the ocean, leaving me without a working vang.

Stuff like that happens to equipment when you're ocean sailing day after day. I immediately asked myself 'what else don't I want to fail right now?' and ran around frantically inspecting everything as best I could.

Some interesting bits in the morning radio check-in. Haulback has the honor of being the first to lose his halyard from chafing. So he hove to, climbed the mast (he has mast steps fortunately), and tried fishing a new halyard down the mast. No luck. So he rigged a block at the top and ran the halyard external.

Seabird is ready to give up on the spinnaker sock, apparently it always twists by the time its hauled up and that makes it difficult if not impossible to unsock. So he's thinking of going back to a bucket and rubber bands to set it. Good luck, is all I can say. Regarding the spinnaker he said 'Marge was right, it's too big and I'm too old.'

Endangered Species reported seeing the elusive 'green flash' Sunday and Monday. I'm jealous, I hadn't even thought to look, and now it's too overcast. Tease came on briefly just to report position, and said he's always in power conserving mode which is why he doesn't stick around and chat.

Audacious reports still no fish. I think the race committee may need to meet him when he comes in and slip him a store-bought fish so he can say he got one.

- Alchera

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