Some have made mistake of reading GPS and/or Tracker distance in statue miles/decimal degrees, leaving them short. Qualifying distance assumes nautical miles......
Some have made mistake of reading GPS and/or Tracker distance in statue miles/decimal degrees, leaving them short. Qualifying distance assumes nautical miles......
Last edited by sleddog; 06-15-2020 at 05:55 PM.
Woo hoo! Just got back from my new qualifier.
I went out the Strait of Juan de Fuca and back for the 400 NAUTICAL (!)
miles. Scared myself half to death when my Yanmar 53 diesel decided to
do a “diesel runaway”. I thought it was going to explode! Filled the entire Strait
with white smoke and every small fishing boat was on the VHF asking if I
needed rescuing! I then had to decide if I wanted to do the qualifier without
the possibility of using the engine. What the heck, it’s a sailboat, right?
Long story short, 7 days and 21 hours later, I had gone out over 100 miles
and put in the 400 miles in incredible light air, for a 2.1 knot average!
Last edited by Westsail; 07-19-2020 at 05:48 PM.
Woo hoo, indeed! Isn't this the funniest organization? You do something so momentous, something very few people would ever dream of doing, and then ... what? You post on an obscure forum like this one and wait days for someone to notice. Such is the strange pastime called singlehanding. And yet.
We know you're up there, sailing slowly (very very slowly), preparing for this race from SF to Kauai. Really, we do. It's this damned pandemic. People are finding it hard to generate excitement for much. And yet: CONGRATULATIONS! We look forward to seeing you soon. Or at some point, anyway. And, again, CONGRATULATIONS! You're IN. You've qualified! Can't wait to see you at the start! And then here:
The Westsail 32 with the blown engine and the 2.1 knot average
Speed for nearly 8 days is “HULA”, and my name is Bill Stange.
OHHHH!
I am looking forward to meeting you! Westsail 32 is a bit different from your first SSS ride!
For those that aren't old enough to remember, Bill held the elapsed time record for the SHTP for a long time, set in his Olson 30 "Intense" in 1988. If I remember correctly, Bill did the races in '92 and '94 as well.
Last edited by AlanH; 07-20-2020 at 09:13 AM.
1968 Selmer Series 9 B-flat and A clarinets
1962 Buesher "Aristocrat" tenor saxophone
Piper One Design 24, Hull #35; "Alpha"
Haha I’ve only done the SHTP once, in ‘88. I will have to work on my 2.1 knot average speed if I want to make the party. No more parking with the albatross for days at a time. Incredibly, I did a qualifier a year ago, in 2019, and I averaged an incredibly slow... that’ll never happen again... 2.1 knots!!!
The Yanmar 53 ran for I would guess about a minute at an RPM that I never thought was even possible. My first reaction was to throttle back, which put the engine in neutral. To my shock, this had no effect on the rpms. I pushed the stop button and turned the key off, but still rpms through the roof and then some. I risked reaching across the motor that I feared may explode at any second to switch off the fuel tank. Then I pinched off one of the fuel lines coming off of the fuel filter. None of this had any effect on my runaway motor. I was running out of ideas to kill this beast. Smoke was pouring into the cabin. I remember thinking that my flashlight wasn’t working, but afterwards I realized it was the smoke making it hard to see. I grabbed a fire extinguisher and had it ready to go. Finally after like I said, after about a minute (or 2?). The engine finally ran out of it’s mystery fuel source, and died with a clunk and a squeak. I have never been so relieved in my entire life.
Thinking about this ordeal afterwards, I was thankful that I didn’t suffer death by engine shrapnel. I was also thankful that the engine had been in neutral, as I don’t see how my max prop could have stood up to those rpms for long.
Last edited by Westsail; 07-22-2020 at 12:46 AM.