Hula, 13:12
Hey,. I was going 7 knots an hour ago, and now I can row my El Toro faster than this!

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Green Buffalo, 13:17
Had that tortellini last night… with red sauce… half a package made two meals worth (so tortellini again tonight).

Wind finally went aft late last night so put the chute up this morning.  Only 10k of wind so cannot drive as low as I would like – to get under the dropping high – but c’est la vie.  Sailing to Hawaii is always a struggle to drive the boat low without going to slow (or accidentally gybing).

Suspect another day or day to be south enough to turn west and aim at the finish.  Though the weather looks light “most of the way”… 10k-12k of wind… so going to be a “long one” (Mary will get to Hanalei a day or two before I do).

The broken vang bracket was despite all I tried to stabilize it was just not good enough… especially thinking about heavy air squalls later in the race.  So after thinking, planning, thinking, napping and gathering all the needed tools and hardware, went forward this morning and removed the solid vang.  Took the blocks, plus a few extras I had on the boat, plus a few shackles and loups, and reinstalled them – so now I have a “regular” vang (12:1 purchase instead of the sold vangs 24:1 purchase). A rare job I didn’t have to go back and forth to finish up.

Took a good long time to flake the Jib Top… such a big sail so a lot of back and forth from point to midship.  Now I need to flake the code zero (ripped) and the hard one – the #1.  Not sure I can get the #1 out the forehatch as It was a bit “big” when I stuffed it away (was that two days ago?).  Maybe tomorrow I tackle flaking the #1 tight.

Heard Robb on Nozomi talk to Siren on VHF last night… but I couldn’t hear Siren and they couldn’t hear me.  So they are “in the neighborhood” but not close.  Late last night Reed from Mountain rang and we talked for just a minute (signal strength was a bit week)… but it was real nice talking to someone after 4+ days alone.

Broke into the boys half way cache for my candy fix… the boys know well about my Walgreen’s candy aisle “habit”.
Cherry licorice… mmm mmm good!

Cheers,
Jim
Green Buffalo

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Aloha, 13:19
im alive! now if only the wind had as much energy as lunch just gave me….
cheers,
Kyle

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Mountain, 02:40
Greetings from Mountain, where the ship smells of feet and the Captain wishes he smelled half that good.
All is well here – Mountain and I are working hard.  According to the  latest fleet position reports though, so is everyone else! Really fun race so far- just hitting my stride.  Taking naps, tweaking the sails, making repairs, enjoying the view.
Many thanks to all who helped with our prep the last few days leading up to the start.
Hi Grady!

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Shark On Bluegrass, 12:02
All well, smooth sailing 12 kn, beam reach, sunshine …

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Northern Star, 12:04
All good aboard Northern Star. Jamie alive and healthy.

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Green Buffalo, 13:52
First… took me over an hour to send email via Iridium GO! yesterday.  Something was “amiss” with the Iridium satellite network.  After a lot of patience and retries it all went through.  Maybe less satellite coverage over the ocean… or maybe older slower satellites over the ocean?  Just guessing.

Things that go bang in the night.
Wind was in the 20k’s – peak 29k – most of the night reaching along under jibtop.  “Bang!”  That didn’t sound good but nothing obvious.  An hour later “bang” again.  hmmm

When the sun rose… the boom vang bracket to the mast had broen two of its four “wings/tabs”.  Unreliable butt welds… sign.
A few spanish windlasses with spectra and looks “good enough” – but time will tell.  Broke these same welds in the 2018 PacCup.  Time to talk to the fabricator (Robb of Nozomi told me so back in 2018).

Four days and still nor running under chute… unusual.  Due to the High being so far south have not yet made it to its southeast quarter where the wind swings (and I swing west).  Tonight or tomorrow for sure “kite up”.

The sun peaked out today and then went away… 4 days overcast… getting old.
It is getting warmer… after 4 days in the same long johns, today was a “wipey” shower below deck – and a fresh pair of long johns… boy does that feel good!  Boy did I stink! Maybe tomorrow or more likely the day after a real fresh water shower in the cockpit?

Sardine sandwich for lunch. Thinking tortellini with red sauce for dinner.

Cheers,
Jim
Green Buffalo

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Hula, 14:18
No spinnaker, no 7 knots, and alas, no more bird companion. For two days we shared music, stories, and hemp seeds..

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Perplexity, 15:36
I was having some email issues but was also sending the go track message everyday. Anyway, things are going well out here. I haven’t received competitor updates in a few days but I’ve never looked at them and don’t think I will. I am just going to sail my race. I have a mast sail track issue at the moment, but checking with the company. I’m hoping it’s not a problem and I’ll be able to shake the reef out soon.

Still cloudy and cld at night but its warming up!

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Hula
There’s a bird spending the night on the ship’s bell. He’s a very good listener.

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Green Buffalo
16:30
Busy last 24 hours.
gribs made it clear I needed to head north a bit to clear the low – while most of the fleet was heading south.  Roll the dice.
Dropped the #1 (a beast to flake… will need to reflake at some point) and hoisted the code zero… at sunset the wind went aft… before midnight a jibe and building wind.  Finally heading south in the “real” ocean winds… out of the coastal low,

Went to sleep…
Only to wake up with a bit of thrashing as the wind had increased quite a bit a blew up the code zero (I bought it used and it was a bit worn out so not much of a loss).
Had hanked on the Jib Top early in the evening knowing the wind might increase. Dousing the tattered code zero and raising the jib top was strenuous but straight forward.

Noticed a ring ding on the deck when “cleaning up”… and saw it had fallen off the main tack pin… and the main tack pin was half way out (this happened two weeks before resulting in the main slugs pulling out of the track)… couldn’t get the pin fully back in so jammed in a screwdriver and some sail tape to get me till morning (too damn dark to sort out… sorted out at daylight).

Flew Jib Top all night… set up preventer as the boom was banging a bit.
Now when do I raise the kite?  Now?  Later today?  Tomorrow morning?
About to get fresh gribs to help me decide (kits up after just two days is “pretty early”… but there is a high building on the track we need to head south to get under).

No more bonine… feeling good… went to bathroom a few times… everything “working”.
Maybe some real food tonight?

Still overcast.  Warming up a bit… though I did run the diesel space heater this morning to take the edge off the chill.

With the solar panel, turns out I just need to run the engine twice a day for just an hour each to keep the batteries up.

Cheers,
Jim
Green Buffalo

 17:24
Another busy last 24 hours.

After reaching all night under the big (155%) jib top… come morning the wind went aft… “aha now the wind swings toward Hawaii” – but I was wrong.

Flew the kite 8 hours only to be steadily headed.  Strange… looked at gribs a second time… aha, the wind turning east around the bottom of the low.
Time to drop the kite and back to the jib top.  I am getting too old for this… back and forth several times between cockpit, mast and bow… dragging sails, dragging lines, getting everything ready for the kite hoist and jib top douse.  Oh and don’t forget untangling and hoisting the spinnaker net… and then reversing all this late in the day.

Good thing I went back to the jib top… over night the wind varied from 14k to 24k from 80 to 110 degrees apparent.  Perfect for jib top… ugly for a kite.
So reaching along under jib top for 20 hours making great time straight to my “waypoint”.

Am I going to far south or not south enough?  Time will tell. Getting a grib as I sent this email that will tell me more…

Food… grapes, raisins, about to cook another 2 cups of rice plus a ramen cup of soup.  “Real food” will need to wait till we get off tis “bumpy” reach.
Tomorrow?  Maybe Tortellini?
Cheese and crackers?

Still overcast.

Cheers,
Jim
Green Buffalo

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Shark On Bluegrass
Tue 22 , all well on the shark. Found wind. Hat fun with the spin last night, shredded it , that why uyou use old sails …

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Northern Star
Northern Star 22 Jun Daily Check in and position report. All is well aboard Northern Star. Jamie is alive and healthy.

Hope all is well with Race Cmte

Wx: Cloudy, 67 degrees, 71% humidity, winds 340 17-18, seas 6-8’ waves from stbd qtr

Position: 35 03.051N. 129 09.341W

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Mountain

Everything is groovy

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From Will Lee s/v Sea Wisdom @ 1654 on 06.22.21

Hi Jackie, good afternoon. This is Will from Sea Wisdom. My email system is acting up and takes me hours to send and receive email msgs. So I’m switch to texting as my primary way of communicating with other people. I informed Brian about this already. Just in case if you don’t know it yet. Thanks for your email. Because you don’t have Facebook, I can text you my daily blog entry.

Day 3, June 21, “It’s getting hot here in the doldrum.”

Day 3 began with light wind, and the sun came out for the first time since last Saturday. The wind was so light, there were actually more work on the boat. I had to make every slight adjustments to the sails in order to take advantage the occasionally rare but short lived breeze. For example, spending 30 minutes to set up the whisker pole to only use it for a few hours before taking it down.

I made some fresh water today using the water maker, and was able to make sparkling water from the ocean with my Sodastream! I don’t need to carry any plastic water bottles. I even added some EmergenC to the homemade sparkling water, then I get to drink soda that is healthy.

I started the morning with a nori ginger soup to warm up my body. The ginger helps me getting my sea legs. To celebrate the change to warmer weather today, I modified the Beef Stroganoff to have Cajun spices. At noon, the color of the ocean is deep and dense blue, amazing to watch each of the 10 foot swell goes underneath the boat ever so quietly. I went from wearing 5 layers of fleece and foul weather gear to just wearing a think base layer.

Around noon time was when I receive the position report from the race committee on where all the racers are. Oh boy, was I wrong about picking the southern route. Here I was getting stuck and trying to figure out a way out of the doldrum. I am in one of the last places in the race.

The NW wind finally came in the late afternoon. I could not be happier. There are still 1900 miles to go, so anything could happen. My number 1 priority is to get to Kauai safely.

I have more gear issues to deal with. The Iridium Go system is not able to send and receive email reliably. I spent hours trying and I got lucky a few times. But texting works. Also, the Gsrmin inReach is my spare satellite communicator and tracker. It decided not to work anymore. At least I still have 2 independent satellite devices that work, Iridium text and a handheld Inmarsat.

The block holding the starboard jib sheet is showing some metal fatigue because when there was no wind, things get banged around. If that block fails, I have a few other blocks that can do the work. Having redundancy and spare parts are so important when I need to be self sufficient.

All boats have checked in and are doing well.

Latest reports.

Mountain, is loving life.

Northern Star, All good aboard, Jame alive and in good health. Morale high.

Aloha, As you all may have noticed last night was a pretty big turning point in the race for most if not all of us out here.  I began the evening firmly on port tack with the code zero up. through the night several times the southerly wind attempted to die and give way to the synoptic northerly, for me this happened at i believe around 1 am PST when I slowly headed more and more south before committing a gybe to starboard tack that was taking me north at a heading of around 300. Not much later the wind went forward and i was able to continue on a course of about 250 as the wind slowly began to build. During the night after the transition, I was very happy to have popped my head out and noticed some stars attempting to poke through the wet marine layer which had soaked the boat with a light drizzle for a few hours before the sun came up. At day break, the clouds persisted but were beginning to show signs far off on the horizon. Not long after, i made the decision to change headsails to the A5 spinnaker which is the smallest I have onboard. Though winds were not too high at the time, they were forecasted to increase as the day went on and this spinnaker would provide me the best opportunity to make good progress in the direction I want to sail without getting pushed too low. With morning winds in the low to mid teens and the sun making an appearance in a blue sky, I was able to put together a few good hours of boat speed with the waves lining up well with my course and surfing waves from a steady 8 knots u to about 12.5. Noon time brought some lightening winds which although frustrating at times certainly could have been worse and as we ease into the third evening underway the winds from this morning seem to have returned. Not present however is the agreeable sea state that had allowed for surfing before, but now I am seeing a bit of a swell well forward of the beam making for a somewhat bumpy ocean.  Once again, the sun is unfortunately long gone, but the temperature seems to have gotten maybe a little warmer since yesterday and the night before so that a small gain. Tomorrow will likely see the beginnings of the freeze dried selections as I intend to finish up the last slice of pizza for dinner this evening. For those curious, I haven’t seen any whales since the first afternoon which has been somewhat pleasant as they gave me quite a few scares early on. I have seen a few jelly fish and a sun fish today along with a couple balls of discarded mooring or fishing lines.

Green Buffalo

06/19/2021. 18:00
The brisk breeze at the start carried well offshore… most of the way to the lightship.
Doing my best to stay on the south side of the course and fleet… where “maybe” the light air is “narrowest”.

A wee bit past the Farallones as I write this.
There were a LOT of fishing boats around the rocks… a bit of weaving to avoid getting to close to them… and only some of them some of them show on AIS.
Passed about 3 miles south of the rocks…

Wind now 7k (changed from #3 to #1 just past the lightship)…

Wind oscillating from 185mag to 210mag. Hard to sleep when the wind has the big oscillations every 10-20 minutes.

Ate Mary’s Peunut Butter & Honey sandwiches… mmm mmm good!

Anyone catch my needing to raise the main 3 times before the start? A long story… I had to raise the main 3 times just before the 2012 start too.
A story for Tree.

Cheers,
Jim
Green Buffalo

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Northern Star. manual daily check in. Northern Star in good condition; Jamie alive, healthy, and in great spirits. Many thanks for the great start and sendoff yesterday.

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Sea Wisdom
William Lee is at Pacific Ocean, Public

Day 1, June 19, “You got a spare?”
The first day was full excitement. Many thanks to my family and friends sending me off from StFYC to the Golden Gate Bridge. It was blowing 20-25 knots at the starting line. I put on a reef and and started my race. The initial passage was a wet one. I had water coming in through the closed hatches. I decided to head west and aiming to pass Farallon on starboard. Along the way, a whale came up and took a deep breath. I could feel the vibration from her spout. Just when I get to enjoy the ocean at the Farallon. I noticed on the current gauge that something was drawing 6 amps when I was not using any electricity. I shut down the breaker and saw that bilge light was on. But the bilge pump was not pumping any water. The bilge pump was relatively new. Good thing that I carried the old bilge pump as a spare. There is no way I would want to keep sailing if there is no electric bilge pump. Changing the bilge pump at sea at the Farallon was not an easy task because I haven’t gotten my sea legs yet. The pump was buried deep in the boat that I had to do some acrobatic move to replace it. The whole ordeal took 3 hours to fix. Lesson learned here is that there is never too many spares. Once I passed Farallon, I kept sailing on the same closed haul port tack on a WSW direction. The wind is light, 8 to 13 knots from the SSW. I’m hoping I can get to the NW synoptic wind soon, may be Sunday night? I haven’t had anything to eat for 24 hours, I’ve been drinking water. Through out the first night, I saw about 5 commerical ships. So there wasn’t much sleep either. I set my alarm every hour to 2 hours.

Today is Father’s Day. Best wishes to all the dads out there.

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Sea Wisdom
06/20/2021 18:32
Dear SHTP RC,
Confirming receipt of position report. I’m doing well. Slowly getting adjusted to life aboard. You probably have seen my log on replacing a burnout bilge pump south of the Farallon. Seems like I’m the southern most boat. Everyone else are up north and further west than me. I hope I’m making the right decision, LOL!
Thank you

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Aloha, Day 1
As many of you have maybe read or seen by now, the bay area delivered on its typical summer days of wind cold and some fog. Though i did cross the line well, my pre start decision making was clearly clouded by the lightening forecast as i held off putting a reef in the main as i believe ever other boat had done. after getting walloped by the express and the j109 long before even reaching the golden gate, I finally threw in a reef and was off to the races as it were. Being an early ULDB, Aloha does not excel beating to windward in big breeze and chop, a fact that is made substantially worse with the subtraction of any weight at all from the rail, because of this I was probably one of very few in the fleet to feel a sense of relief as the wind eased up and the reefs came out not too far past Point Bonita. The cloudy overcast bay tried to clear in spots as we eased on towards the Farallons, but unfortunately I haven’t really seen the sun break through as of yet and I get the feeling that trend may persist for quite a few more miles.  As the evening set upon the fleet, the wind backed off even more giving me the opportunity for the first headsail change of the race to the code zero, sadly shifty winds and large swells made this sail difficult to keep pulling through the night so it was back with the jib just before it got dark. The thick cloud cover of the day brought in a cold dark night with just a small glimmer of the moon glowing through, at times the light winds nearly shut off completely making a bad sleep situation even worse as sails needed near constant attention and courses needed changing to keep up with the shifting winds. Speaking of shifting winds, the southerly surge that we sailed into at the beginning of the race is still here for all of us I believe as we continue on port tack in a mostly westerly direction. Most recent models that I  retrieved this morning indicate this should let up by mid afternoon and we might be transitioning into a strong synoptic flow by late this evening at which point it might slowly begin like were actually sailing towards Hawaii. Until then I’ll continue trying to get as much rest as possible before the next few days ahead of windy reaching.

AND THEY’RE OFF!!
THOSE INTREPID BUGLIGHTERS, DRAWN TO THE SEA.
ALL DIVISIONS HAD CLEAN STARTS AND ENJOYED THE COMPANY OF A FEW ESCORT BOATS TO SEE THEM OFF. SAIL WELL FRIENDS!
ALL RACERS HAVE CLEARED THE FARALLONE ISLANDS.
WORKING THEIR WAY INTO SOUTH WESTERLY WINDS.


Kane division  starts.

The battle begins in Lono division.

Siren

Shark On Bluegrass

The June 19 start is rapidly approaching. Racers are busy finalizing preparations.
Most boats have cleared tech inspection.

Skippers from out of town begin arriving to stage boats at Richmond Yacht Club.
Northern Star being welcomed at RYC.

The Singlehanded Sailing Society invites you to its Rigging and Sails seminar at  Island Yacht Club at  7:30 pm, Wednesday, January 17, 2018.  Guest speakers are Ryan Nelson of Rogue Rigging and  Dominic Marchal of Marchal Sailmakers. It is Free! Bring your friends, too, but if you’d rather attend remotely, please register for the webinar at:  https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/144003426004643586