AirMail Test Blog

Hi all,

I am sitting on the boat at Brickyard Cove working on our comms. We are thiiiiiis close to all the technology working working, but the internet is very slow and the software a little glitchy. To top it off my phone has zero reception at the marina, so I have limited ability to trouble-shoot.

I thought I'd take the time, though, to test out the email-to-blog-through-iridium-go setup and be sure that is working. It is surprisingly one of the easier things to accomplish on the computer from the boat. Who'd have thought?

Raife took me to the airport very early Saturday (thank you, Raife!), and after Lori picked me up and we had a quick breakfast, we got to work on boat projects and went for a short sail to confirm the autopilot is working as planned. We are making really good progress and making lots of decisions together, although we still have the typical last-minute to-do list. While I am here, Lori is at home working on final packing of the ditch bag, organizing tools, and some food provisioning.

The forecast is looking rather light, at least for the start of the race, although it is early enough that we are not making too many specific plans just yet.

For now, I am back to trying to get our GPS position to show up in Expedition (our navigation software). Wish me luck!

Cathy

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What does it take to get people ready to sail (double handed) to Hawaii?

Another good question!

Both Cathy and Lori have extensive offshore sailing experience, and have taken the two-day, intensive safety at sea seminar and participated in many webinars ranging from boat prep and provisioning to weather, routing, and sailing/sail choices. We started sailing together in 2021, and have done a handful of races together in the Bay, mostly double-handed (two people) plus the 150-qualifying sail required for the Pac Cup. 

Lori has done two races from San Francisco to Hawaii (on bigger boats with more people) and has also done a return from Kauai to Port Townsend, Washington. Along with that, she has raced offshore (outside the Golden Gate bridge anywhere from 20 to 90 miles) for the last 15 years. The last six of those years she has raced double-handed on Hang 20 offshore (and won a season). 

Cathy has been racing since 2009, including inshore double-handing, seven Double-Damned races (fully crewed), and four Oregon Offshores on a similar but different design to Hang 20. She raced in the 2016 Vic-Maui and the 2018 Pac Cup, both fully crewed.  

We can both fill in any position on the boat, but Lori is happiest on foredeck, and Cathy is happiest trimming. Now, who's going to drive? (har har har)

We can always use more practice and plan to practice extensively the week prior to leaving.  We're really excited to go!!

What does it take to get a boat ready to sail 2000 miles across the Pacific ocean?

Good question!!

Most people don't really comprehend that if something happens in the middle of the Pacific ocean, the coast guard can't come and get us.  That's why the boat (and people - more on that in a separate post) have to be sturdy, sea worthy, and have the right equipment so that nothing happens!

The first thing we have to meet is the required equipment list for the race.  If you are interested it is linked here.

This is a pretty extensive list to start with.  Hang 20 was signed up to do the 2020 Pac Cup and then it was cancelled when COVID hit.  So, the boat has being prepped for a while.  In the summer of 2019 we took the mast down, added a new mast head antenna and wind instruments so that we'd get the wind speed, direction, along with speed on our instruments.  We added a new radio that was a VHF but also broadcasts and receives AIS signals.  These are signals that ships and other boats transmit.  This lets us "see" big ships and also lets the big ships "see" us (even in the dark).  Also in the summer of 2019, the windows were replaced (they leaked) and all leaky screws were re-bedd to minimize leakage into the boat.  The boat went in for inspection and some work was done reinforcing bulkheads and such (the inside parts that hold the boat together) so that Hang 20 was super sturdy!  We bought four 30-amp lithium batteries and hooked up the solar panels.  We bought a PC laptop to run our routing software, expedition.  We bought a satellite connection so we can get weather information and send position reports offshore.  We thought we were almost ready to go....

And then COVID hit.  No 2020 Pac Cup.  Very disappointing but also, retrospectively, it ended up being a good thing because as we prep now for the race (in less than 2 weeks - yikes!) I realize we had much more to do!  And, it allowed me to find Cathy, an awesome Pac Cup partner, to race with!

What we have been doing this past year - securing batteries, re-doing the non-skid on the deck (to keep people from slipping), buying and practicing with a good autopilot (that will probably drive better than us when we're really sleepy).  Winches have been serviced.  I have also made us a bean bag mattress for sleeping on the cabin floor, I have made a lot of hanging storage pockets, and both bunks have a lee cloth, though we are likely to only sleep on starboard.  We have a new heavy duty hatch board and I made a dodger to hopefully keep us dry upwind.  Cathy has become quite the expert with the routing software and is very confident with the electronics.  The trailer is now road worthy and will be shipped over while we race.  Then the trailer and boat get shipped home while we fly home.  

Yesterday I cleaned the interior of the boat and we are now ready to load stuff and to practice more before we start.  Hawaii here we come!

Lori

 

About the Program

Lori Tewksbury and Cathy Meyer start the Pacific Cup at 1010 hrs PDT July 4, 2022, from St. Francis Yacht Club in San Francisco Bay to Kaneohe Bay on Oahu, Hawaii. We will be in the Double-Handed division, with 8 other boats including one other DH Express 27. 

We met through a mutual friend, Mark Werder, who connected the two specifically for this race. Lori was prepared to race Hang 20 in 2020, but the pandemic had other ideas, as the race was canceled that year. Lori and Cathy have done a handful of practice races and sails, getting to know each other and preparing the boat and themselves to check this off their bucket lists. 

During the race, we'll post updates as often as we can muster the energy, but let's be honest, it may be infrequent. Since it's just the two of us, we expect little sleep but lots of adventure. 

A little about the boat and the race: 

It's an Express 27 - an ultra-light displacement keelboat designed by Carl Schumaker, with simple systems and tight quarters. It has a fractional rig, 27.25' LOA and an 8' beam. We have no watermaker, diesel engine, refrigeration, head or galley.  

For those who don't know offshore racing, we have a ton of safety equipment, including an AIS transponder, a dan buoy, a life raft, an EPIRB, inflatable PFDs with personal locator beacons, strobe lights, and crotch straps, and we have backup systems for navigating and communications. 

Lori has done a ton of work preparing the boat. She rigged a makeshift sink with a pump for water - you can see it in the photo below. We'll use a jetboil to make warm drinks, noodles, and backpacking food. We'll bring the water we need, as well as the required emergency water which cannot be opened as long as we are still in the race - but it's there if we really need it.

We'll sleep in shifts in a pipe berth below the cockpit, making room in between naps for jibes, sail changes, navigation, and cooking. There won't be a lot of time for much else. 

We'll use Expedition software for navigation, with an Iridium Go satellite connection to download weather data. A typical year on a boat like this will take 12-14 days, but it's weather dependent. 

There are two links to the left - one is Lori's Garmin InReach, which until July 4 will show our qualifying sail from late May, and the other is the YellowBrick tracker the race organizers require us to carry but is not active yet. The YB tracker will be delayed on your screen by a few hours until we reach a few hundred miles from Hawaii. I believe the InReach is always delayed. I'll try to confirm these details later. 

Another helpful tip for the uninitiated: electronics can be finicky on the ocean. Glitches are typical. We will not be checking our emails or our phones during the race, with very few exceptions for communicating with the race committee. We don't know how often we'll be able to post, but we'll try to send an update here or there. We'll definitely send an update when we've arrived. 

See you on the flipside!

<3 Cathy and Lori