2019 LongPac Reflections

#flashbackfriday!
One year ago today The Singlehanded Sailing Society’s 2019 Great Pacific Longitude Race (aka The Long Pack) started in blustery San Francisco Bay conditions! There was lots of boat carnage with broken steering, rudders & auto pilots along with some severe sea sickness in the fleet. This race proved its intensity with the first night packing a punch of 35 knot of winds and large seas. It was a tough race with a strange twist of events, it was determined that two of the finishing boats didn’t actually sail all the way to the 126.40 mark and inadvertently turned around too early! So there were only 6 boats out of the original 16 that sailed to officially complete the race! SHARK ON BLUEGRASS finished first in Division 2 and first overall! Congrats to all the racers who sailed, it was a tough race indeed!
Any reflections a year later from those that participated? Things you’d do differently or change?

https://www.jibeset.net/show.php?RR=...OC=r1&TYP=html

Pixs:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/4M661k9gRZsanf7y9

Quote:

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Originally Posted by captleasure

Things you’d do differently or change?

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Take extra juice for the AP ram.

All the glaring lights in the cockpit were exhausting, at night....the charge monitor, the blue USB port lights, the navigation ipod screen and so on.

....but no lights for the autopilot, because we weren't using one.

So....NO lit-up electronic gizmo's in the cockpit.

Don't trust your brain to remember the proper co-ordinate to turn around.
After a couple days of being seasick, every longitude looks like the turn around!

Attachment 5610

Make a note! Write it in sharpie on the bulkhead!
Get one of these stickers!

Attachment 5611

Cause when you're 100 miles into the return trip and realize something's wrong, it's too late!!

The irony is that I didn't need to qualify since I completed the 2018 SHTP.
I was doing this one for fun __/)__