Where do I start? I guess before the beginning.
Mark Werder, who lives in the Bay Area and raced on
Hokulani, introduced me to Lori last summer. I had lunch with Mark and Stacey
while they was racing in the Columbia Gorge. Lori was looking for crew for a
Pac Cup on Hang 20, and I had just been telling a friend right before lunch
with Mark that double-handing a Pac Cup was on my bucket list.
Lori was ready to race in 2020 but the race was canceled
because of Covid. Her crew raced the following year in the Transpac and decided
to move on, so she was looking for someone else. Mark described her as wanting
to sail fast, but also wanting to be safe. That's the right combo, in my
opinion, so I flew down and did a couple races with her in the Bay, and we
decided to go to Hawaii together.
Hang 20 is an Express 27, a Carl Schumaker design and ultra-light displacement 27’ keelboat. It weighs about 2500 lbs empty. It has a fractional rig (which means the forestay and spinnaker don’t run quite up to the top of the mast). It has a tiny outboard motor that gets emptied, sealed off, and stored below for the race. It's not big enough and we don't have enough fuel capacity to do any real motoring with it - it's basically for the harbor when we get there. Because of that, we also have no alternator or power generator other than solar panels. This is all typical for a boat this size. and the joy, for a sailor, is that you just sail. There's not a bunch of extra systems to try to maintain. You just sail.
Lori has spent months (years now?) preparing the boat.
She sewed custom pockets for the cabin, water resistant cover for the battery
compartment, a dodger, traveler bag to hold radio, GPS, sunscreen, etc, up on
deck. She built a giant bright pink bean bag – which we quickly nick-named the “Fun
Bag” - for us to sleep on in the middle of the cabin floor downwind. She had
the boat looked over in depth more than once by a boat builder. Rigging replaced.
New non-slip deck paint. New sails (including the Cat Kite, which I'll tell you
more about below.) New lines. Splicing. A very extensive medical/first aid kit.
The list goes on and on – I am sure I only know about half of it.
I flew down and did a few races - some were postponed or
canceled for excessive wind, and some had such light wind we got sucked out
under the Golden Gate Bridge by the tides. Not ideal training, really, but
we've both sailed enough to roll with it. When races were canceled, we went out
on the Bay for some sail practice, or stayed in and worked on the boat
together. I was able to familiarize myself with the equipment, even if not
enough to really dial myself in.
I did the safety at sea training online and in person at
Encinal Yacht Club in the fall. I also spent a bit of time with Lori's
partner Bob trying to figure out how to
use Expedition. It's the navigation software that we would use to analyze
weather and test out routing options. It's really powerful but not at all user
friendly. Bob got me started, but I kept getting stuck. So, I paid for a North
U training series that got me over the hump. I read and watched everything I
could from Stan Honey (expert navigator) online (including re-watching the
safety at sea weather section once stuff started making sense), trying to get
familiar with the weather patterns and our likely course. A couple friends
(Dana and Mary) from Escape Artist had a similar comms set up, so they came
over to test out their Iridium (satellite data connection like what Hang 20
has) and our software setups from my back yard a couple weeks before
race.
I pulled gribs (weather files) and ran optimal routes
through Expedition daily for about a month before the race. Two weeks before, I
was thinking I was so glad we weren't starting then - the high pressure zone
that normally camps a ways off the coast had moved further south than usual and
would have meant a really really slow route. As I watched, though, it didn't
really improve for our start on July 4. The high split in two, making routing
incredibly challenging, as the predictions were for more or less uniformly
lighter winds than usual. Leading up to the race, it was looking like 15, 16,
17, maybe 18 days - quite a bit more than the 12-14 we usually expect for this
boat in typical conditions. We hadn’t dialed our polars in (target boat
speeds for different wind angles and wind speeds, ideally fine-tuned for a
specific boat and sail quiver), and were using data from a different boat and
crew. It was hard to know exactly how much to rely on the data, but it was
pretty clear it would take longer than usual. We would need to spend a full day
getting the boat put away and on the trailer to ship home, so I told Raife
(after getting a blessing from my boss) that if we were going to get in later
than mid-day on the 20th that he had discretion to extend our stay in Hawaii
after the race so I had more than a day of free time to unwind before heading
home.
I flew down to California on June 25 in advance of our July
4 start. Lori and I provisioned and loaded the boat; tested communications; and
pulled the boat and polished the bottom. She picked away at a long to-do list
while I worked during the weekdays. I helped with projects in the evenings and
on weekends. Bob helped a ton, and Raife showed up a few days before and helped
with some last minute items. I flew down with 32 pounds of food (backpacking
meals and snack bags Raife helped me put together), and had already stashed a
bit more at Lori's place. It seemed like a lot, but I didn't want to be
hungry. Lori and I had each raced to Hawaii twice fully-crewed before, but
neither of us had been in charge of provisioning – we had just eaten what we
were given. This time, we each brought our own food because Lori is pickier
than me and has some dietary restrictions.
When the day came, we got up early and Bob and Raife dropped
us at the boat. They went over to Sea Star, Bob's boat that was supposed to
race fully crewed but had some structural problems that prevented their
making the trip. Instead, they towed us and Yeti (the other DH Express 27) out
to the start line and saw us off.
We had a great send-off. We were early enough to the start
line that we were able to settle in and check out the other boats before the
start. Sea Star was full of really awesome people, friends happy to make sure
we knew we were loved. We heard cheering from the St. Francis Yacht Club and
the beach next door, and we waved to some of our competitors (Erica on
Accelerando; Moni on Azure.) We saw a couple other boats back down right at the
start of our 5-minute sequence and realized it was a good idea. This is where
you backwind your mainsail to make the boat go backward, hopefully clearing
kelp or anything else that might be stuck on your keel or rudder.
We waited until just a few minutes before our start to put
up our headsail, since it restricts visibility. We ended up starting second
row, a moment later than perfect, but without any possibility for right-of-way
issues with another boat, and a comfortable position for the start of a 2,000nm
race. On the way out the Gate, Sea Star followed us out and we got lots of
cheers, smiles, waves, and blown kisses. It was really lovely. Lori and I were
both quite emotional about it.
I usually take seasickness meds for the first couple days of
any offshore race, but since the swells and wind were forecast to be pretty
light the first few days, I didn’t take any the first day. I had a moment or
two when I felt a bit queasy, but nothing too concerning. The second day was
worse, so I took one pill. That’s all I took the whole race! I did have a few
more moments where I felt a bit sick, but it always passed. I have now sailed
to Hawaii three times without vomiting! I consider this weakness officially
managed (not conquered, mind you, but managed).
The first few days were light wind - frustrating and tedious. We decided to go south. Or, I decided and convinced Lori. Something like that. The challenge was that we could take the rhumb line course (the shortest course), but it would have been light wind and likely upwind, with a split high north and south of us. If these two high pressure zones converged as I expected them to, we'd end up right in the middle of a very large patch (hundreds of miles) with no wind. The alternative was to go south to where we knew there would be wind - but it was a lot more miles beyond the shortest course.
We went south, hunting wind. For the first 5-6 days, we were pulling weather
files multiple times a day and checking other boat positions, trying to be as
competitive as we could be. We were sailing more miles, but overall I liked the
strategy. We continued to be surprised at how well our competitors (Yeti and
Foamy in particular) were doing closer to the high, but I wanted to be really
careful not to get sucked up into it.
At some point a few days in, the wind was behind, and we
were able to put up the brand new spinnaker - the Cat Kite. This beauty has a
giant orange cartoon cat printed on it with white feet and tail tip on a
surfboard wearing a black wetsuit and sunglasses. We flew it for only a few
hours before I rounded us up in a gust and caught the luff tape on the hanks
for the spinnaker net and tore the tape off about five feet of it. We were both
really disappointed, though thankfully Lori was pretty gentle with me about it
even though it was brand new and her birthday present from Bob. We put up an
old loaner sail to practice with before we used the next best kite (the Dog
Kite, which features a giant pug in a Hawaiian shirt and no pants on a
surfboard - equally ridiculous but not equally as new).
In hindsight, I think the routing choice was right … but we
went too far. The port jibe had us pointed at Santa Barbara, which you may know
is not between San Francisco and Hawaii. After jibing back out too late,
I told Lori to sail deep (more south than west) for a four-hour watch. When I
awoke, it was clear we had gone too far. We took the kite down and reached up
to the spot on the ridge (the extension of the high pressure system) where I
had hoped to cross - the spot where we should stay in better breeze while trying
to keep the extra miles to a sensible amount. If we had jibed out earlier and
worked our way up (upwind; west) instead of staying down (downwind; south), I
think we'd have been at the same spot on the ridge earlier and with a lot fewer
miles. As it was, we had given up a ton of miles to Yeti, but once we were on
the ridge, we were gaining on them fast.
OK, another confession. I have still not looked at the
tracker. I don't remember exactly when all this happened. My recollection is
that we were gaining on Yeti when our instruments failed.
July 9, the instruments went black during the day. Lori went
down to check the fuse, which seemed ok but wouldn't go back into its spot
(what is this spot called, a fuse box? The fuse hole? I still don't know. I'm
still not an electrician). In the process, it seems the fuse (the small glass
cylinder style) cracked. Lori swapped it for the fuse on the autopilot circuit
since we weren't using that much anyway - the other circuits we needed more
(radio, AIS, and mast-head running lights). The instruments started up, but
they were finicky. They did not immediately turn on, and when they did, there
was a little on-then-off-then-on-again action. I used a wire brush to try to clean
out the connections in the fuse box. Eventually, they stayed on and we left
them to it.
Up to that point, we had been watching the power on the
shunt, which tells us whether we have more power coming in or out. The shunt
would tell us every day that our batteries were at 100% charge by about 10 or
11am.
That night, things worked until early morning. Then I got a
low voltage warning from the instruments. It was time for Lori to get up
anyway, so she turned everything off, and we started troubleshooting for real.
We worked for a day or a day and a half on our own to try to figure out what
was going on. We confirmed something in the instruments circuit was bleeding
power. A short of some sort, maybe. Probably related to the fuse issue but
never confirmed. I re-wired the fuse panel to fully swap the wiring for the
instruments and autopilot. We got it back online briefly, but we also
discovered the batteries had gotten low enough to die. We had four 30Ah lithium
batteries and a fifth one as a backup which was fully charged, disconnected,
and sealed off. I noticed when looking at the charge history that the
"full charge" we thought we had was a little lower voltage each day.
I don't know why. We suspected that with the broken fuse, we somehow created a
short in the instrument circuit, causing a drain on the batteries. But we don't
really know. We do know that the batteries underwent a deep discharge which we
think turned off the solar charge controller. This is all Victron technology,
in case you are curious. I went forward to check the fuse in the controller,
and although the fuse was fine, three of four of the wires came out without me
even pulling. I noticed they were not wired well - all of them including the
one that stayed connected had only a few strands of each wire actually
connected under the set screws. I stripped each and re-wired the controller.
July 10, we noticed the batteries were draining quickly, and
charging slowly. We turned off instruments and Lori sailed to the feel and the
masthead fly, still lit up by running lights. In the morning, we reached our
capacity for problem-solving on our own, so on July 11, we reached out to Bob
to get help trying to re-set the controller. Bob had some ideas and also talked
with an electrician who had helped wire the boat. We worked through a number of
potential problems (fuses, connections, voltage readings, etc), and after a
number of hours confirmed we would not be able to fix it on the water by
ourselves. It became clear to me that we had already lost hours of precious
sleep, and that continuing to try to troubleshoot with Bob was just eating
through batteries on our phone and the Iridium and costing even more sleep.
We went into power conservation mode. I immediately sent
Raife and my mom messages saying, essentially, "Sorry, no more
texts." Lori updated Bob, and we started only copying him on our daily
check-ins to Race Committee, with a few extra messages here or there when we
had the Iridium on. We asked him to share with Raife and the blog, as
appropriate. From there, we had AAA-powered backup navigation lights, and AAs
to power our cell phones with navigation apps and communication ability through
the Iridium, and handheld GPS and VHF. We had to stop listening to music, which
was a bummer since we were up on deck alone a lot of the time. I had a lot of
time with my thoughts, which were mostly positive! Although I kept thinking how
relaxing it would be to be drinking wine in Italy instead.
We had two laptops - Lori's was a few years old so I had
bought a new cheap one from Costco. We had no way to charge mine, but could
theoretically have charged Lori's from the remaining boat batteries. We were
getting a very very slow trickle charge from the solar panels, but not enough
to really do anything. We wanted to save the last little bit of boat battery
power for running lights and maybe the masthead radio coming into Kaneohe at
the end. So, we used my computer a few times. When we went into low-power mode,
it had 65% charge, and it used about 5% each time we used it to check in and
download weather. On day 7, we fired up Lori's laptop, which had been
fully charged and turned off at the house. It had 31% charge. I think we used
it 2 or 3 times before it died at 9%. We spent a lot of time talking about how
to try to maximize power, but in the end, we used her computer until it died
and then meted out the power from my computer to make sure we had enough juice to
get adequate weather files to avoid hurricanes and tropical storms, and to
check in at 100nm and 25nm as required by the sailing instructions for the
race. Just in case, we got permission from the race committee to check in by
text, but this turned out not to be necessary.
We unsubscribed from the fleet newsletter, which was a real
bummer. The updates are fun to read and make you feel like you are connected to
the other racers. We were rather isolated without them. We also stopped
downloading boat positions (except once or twice after that), and started
getting weather files only once a day or once every other day. All of this was
hard on morale, but what can you do? You gotta get there. We did our best
to sail the fastest course we could despite the new dearth of context clues.
In the meantime, wind came and wind went. We had sailed downwind toward Santa Barbara, then reached up and over the ridge. After that, wind was light again as we sailed slightly upwind to avoid another high-pressure, light-wind area. It was tedious. We hit two very calm spots. I wondered one night, as the sails slatted back and forth, whether we might be swimming in the calm the next day. Luckily, breeze came back on and that didn't happen, but we had multiple days of light wind and frustration. I can't remember, but I think this was while we still had instruments (digital compass, wind speed, wind angle, boat speed, and speed over ground). We were moving when the instruments died.
That night (July 14), Lori drove into the sunset and through
that into the pitch black. That was the first night the moon didn't grace us
with its presence before the darkness filled in. It was overcast, the wind
still light-ish, and we were still reaching instead of going downwind. Lori
said it was incredibly difficult to drive in - she couldn't even see the
horizon. We complained to the race committee at our daily check-in that we needed more wind. The next night, it was my turn, and the breeze was finally on (and
behind us, as desired - Hawaii was more or less straight downwind, an angle we
couldn't hit but we were closer than before). A bit nervous about sailing into
the dark, as the sun went down, I studied the motion of the boat, the horizon,
and the wind on my ear. Lori had rigged a headlamp covered in duct tape to the
compass so she could see it. I would turn it off - I found it disorienting
because it was too bright. So, with the sky overcast, it became truly dark. The breeze had come up and we were
seeing squall after squall. We sailed into and through the night with the big
spinnaker up (the Dog Kite), and it never occurred to us to take it down. I
surprised myself, sailing by just wind feel on my ear. If the breeze was on my cheek,
I was too high (too close to the wind), and if I felt it on the other side of
my neck, I knew I was too deep. We sailed too fast, and I veritably scared the shit out of myself. The boat rocketed down waves, roaring over them instead
of splashing through them, and I knew one small wrong move meant we would crash
hard - rounding the boat up or down and likely breaking things. This is why I said I had transcended space and time - well, that and a bit of sleep deprivation turning me into some sort of comical sea poet. We were
going so fast - straight into the pitch black - and barely under control, all
with no instruments, no compass, just the feel of the wind to know
the angle, the sound of the waves to tell me the boat speed (splash-splash, SPLASH-SPLASH, or ROAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRR), and the only light from the bioluminescence kicked up by a wake bigger than this little boat should be able to throw. I had no idea
I was capable of driving a boat in those conditions. I found myself in another dimension for a half hour or so -
it's impossible to describe the feeling with regular words.
Eventually, I rounded up. This is where you heel the boat
over too much to maintain steerage. The boat heels way over and spins on its
hull toward the direction of the wind. The sails flog and hopefully you can get
steerage back and drive back down. It's loud and scary. You worry about
breaking things. I got it back, but rounded up again. Lori got up, and took her
turn at the helm. I talked to her about how I was managing the wind direction,
and she owned it. She drove for an hour or two with me passed out on the Fun
Bag in all my gear, ready to pop up if necessary. She drove until she rounded
up, tipping me (not too violently) out of the Fun Bag. I came up and we traded
places. We did that all night with very little sleep for either of us. It was
transformative for me.
In the morning, before dawn, we saw a full moonbow. It was
breathtaking. After dawn, we decided we needed more sleep than that, reefed the
mainsail and took the kite down for a while.
[A brief aside about sleep. Before the instruments failed,
we were each getting 2.5 hours in the bunk throughout the night and 3.5 hours
during the day, with overlap between those sleeps for navigating, sail changes,
cooking, eating etc. We lost tons of sleep while trying to troubleshoot the
power problems, and since we could no longer use the autopilot, we never really
caught up. The hectic sail through the night with the big kite was just a bit
more than we could handle after already being exhausted. We never really got
back our 3.5 hour sleeps. After the power went out, we would drive until we
couldn't do it anymore; then the other one would haul herself out of the bunk
and take a turn. We spent a lot of days giving the other just as much time as
we could muster, but it was usually only about two hours in the bunk at a time after
that. We didn't sleep in the Fun Bag much except toward the end of the race. As sleep got more scarce, the bit we could get was a bit easier to come by if we didn't have to crawl in and out of the pipe berth beneath the cockpit seats.]
We flew a spinnaker (either the Dog Kite or the bright pink
asymmetric kite) as much as we could, but if we couldn't carry it for
exhaustion, we'd go to the number 3 - the smaller jib. The motion of the boat
isn't as stable and pleasant with the no 3, but we weren't usually in danger of
crashing out as we were with the kite. I did manage to round up at least once
with the no 3, which surprised me, but this is a little boat and the swells were
over our heads. Sometimes the boat would fall off a wave sideways - sails fully
loaded. Once or twice it fell off a wave straight into a round up. At
least with the jib, it was easy to recover and less likely to break things.
More of a surprise than anything.
We figured out that Lori’s favorite curse word starts with an
S, and mine with an F.
We had the A5 up (bright pink almost new asymmetric spinnaker) for a while one day, although it has a very narrow window, as far as wind angle and wind speed, where it is happy. Lori drove it well one day while the breeze picked up, eventually getting overpowered. When we went to take it down, we did some spectacular shrimping. Best shrimping I’ve ever done. Didn’t catch anything, but got quite a workout pulling that giant pink sail out of the ocean. Managed to get both lines on winches and just pull it inch by inch. As more of it came out of the water, it got a tiny bit easier and on and on, until it and 10 gallons of water were in the boat with it. By some miracle, we didn't even have to re-run the lines.
On July 13, we had a small ceremony to spread the ashes of Lori’s friend Ben Mewes, who was also a sailor who had loved the Pacific Cup. It was very touching, and I was very honored to be able to be a part of it. Afterward, we opened halfway gifts from a number of friends. Measuring halfway is difficult since you don’t know the total time or exact mileage until you arrive in Hawaii. We picked the 13th as more than halfway in time but still more than half the official course distance remaining, and it was a nice pick-me-up for me.
We found ourselves pretty lonely. We didn't see a boat or
ship of any sort for about 10 days. We saw one sailboat in 12 days. We were
excited! The second time we saw it, we hailed them. It was Accelerando. We had
a really nice brief chat with Erica. We made sure they knew we had deck-level
running lights but no masthead lights, and would be on the same jibe for a
while. Erica offered to hail us if she saw any ships on their AIS, since ours
was no longer working. We all agreed the mai tais would taste very good! It was
a very welcome sound to hear a friendly voice – and another racer at that.
Later, a ship headed straight for them, they jibed back to port and disappeared
over the horizon. I think that night is when they really pulled away from us. I
enjoyed a chat with Erica at the yacht club later, and thanked her for her
offer of help.
Despite the loneliness, I do find that the complete 100% separation from normal life, where I get to immerse myself in a sailing adventure on the open ocean, just me and the boat, brings out my sense of humor. I crack jokes, and things that wouldn't be funny on land are hilarious. This is harder when you're by yourself on deck, but I still enjoyed myself most of the time.
Food stopped tasting good after about five days. We had
brought three or four times as much food as we needed, but it all started tasting the same.
Dry meat? Backpacking food? Chocolate? I didn’t want any of it. Lori’s
experience was pretty similar, I think. I had a couple days where I did better,
but I probably only managed to choke down about 1000 calories a day for the last 12 days.
Just enough to keep going. I did stay pretty well-hydrated for a woman who drinks surprisingly little water in normal life. We brought 32 gallons of water in addition to the
two gallons required by the race committee for emergencies. We used about 25, I
think, including the gallon each we used to wash our hair on day 15. Having the extra food and water did make us feel a little better about our lack of power. At least we were well-provisioned.
We saw tons of whales. Two surfaced right next to the boat
headed in exactly the opposite direction, too close for comfort. Had it been
nighttime, I can't say I wouldn't have hit the second one. This is scary for a
sailor! Whales are hard on boats. Lori saw a couple albatross. They are
beautiful. I had a handful of dolphins playing around and under the bow for
about 15 minutes. That was really magical. There were a variety of sea birds
flying around. We did actually see a booby; it just didn't land on the boat! We saw quite a few rainbows, beautiful sunsets and sunrises.
The color of the water out there when the sun is shining on it is breathtaking.
A couple times, a cloud line ran the same direction we were sailing and the
water on one side of the boat was stunning blue, while the other side was a cool grey. Incredible.
The stars out there are like nothing you've ever seen. Go to the desert and look up. The stars are amazing. There are twice as many from the middle of the ocean, if you can get a night with no clouds and no moon. Stars are also great for driving to. I spent a lot of hours with the Big Dipper just off my right shoulder. Check your compass briefly with your headlamp, find a couple stars, and then turn the headlamp back off. It's the most peaceful way to sail through the night, in my opinion. You know the ancient Polynesians didn’t have GPS!
Three or five days before the end, we started getting boat butt. We managed to hold it off that long, but I think once it got hot out it was too much. Boat butt is a rash you get from sitting in salt water too long. After that long on the water, we were pretty uncomfortable. Lori had brought a couple sarongs, and by this time it had gotten hot enough we would just wear these instead of bottoms, although we were more creative if we had to go up to the bow (who needs pants on an all-girls boat anyway?). We definitely each doused the spinnaker at least once wearing only a PFD, tether, and gloves. Sometimes it needs to come down! I worried about the sarong getting caught in rigging or something, so didn’t wear it forward for sail changes or jibes. We mostly wore long sleeved tops in the sun instead of dealing with sunscreen on arms. Hats with brims are important in the sun.
We both arrived totally covered in bruises and a few
scrapes, and sore, stiff backs. Nothing too major. I had brought a lacrosse
ball that I would use to roll out my hips on the floor of the cabin every
couple days. I think if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have been able to walk when we got
there. I cut my right hand a couple times. Once on a screw inside the boat during a round-up. Once by being an idiot while pulling water to wash my hair. Raife and Ana were horrified at how swollen my knuckle was; I hadn't even noticed. My elbow was messed up when we left. No surprise that it still is. The first two days, when I woke up, my whole body hurt. Ibuprofen really has been an important part of our diets!
We arrived early July 21 – just twelve hours after the luau
I had wanted to attend. Oh well! The night before was some of the gnarliest
sailing maybe that I've ever done. The swells were huge – 20 or 25 feet probably, but I’m guessing.
Someone told us they saw 38.6 knots of wind on their anemometer that night
(ours wasn’t working, of course). This is just about as much wind as I have ever
sailed in. We had the full main up with the no 3, and I had the scariest moment
of the race. Lori was trying to sleep below, and we were absolutely flying straight
downwind with too much sail area. She had said something to me before she went
down about not having much maneuverability. I took this as being about our ability
to avoid ships, which I worry about less than she does, so I didn’t think much
of it. But after she was down for a half hour or so in the dark, I realized we
were headed way too fast toward a lee shore that was only about 50 miles away,
and I had the boat just barely under control. The tiller was vibrating and I
was on high alert - every muscle tense. It was another night with continuous squalls. I couldn’t
imagine how we could possibly get a reef into the main, and no one was going
forward to take down the jib. Just as a squall ended and a line of clear sky
opened up behind us, I saw Lori’s headlamp below. She stuck her head up and
asked how it was going. I told her we had way too much canvas up and we needed
to do something about it. She asked if I wanted to reef and I said I did. She
put on her gear and went forward. We eased all the lines you can think of to
ease, and it wasn’t enough to get slack on the main halyard – too much
friction. So, I came up 30, 40, 50 degrees (who knows) and eased the jib sheet
way out. The jib flogged and yanked on the rig with each fill – very
uncomfortable. Lori went straight to the second reef (the biggest reduction in
the sail, for you non-sailors), and I was able drive back down and trim the jib
back in. The helm settled back down and stopped vibrating, but I found myself shaking after being way too tense through the squalls and the reef maneuver. We sailed all the way in with that configuration. It was a bit too
little sail area after the sun came up, but we’d had enough and just carried it across the line at 0700 hours sharp. It took just under 17 days.
Coming into the islands is pretty beautiful. We got close
before sunrise, and saw the glow of light from the island before we could see
any particular lights or land. We identified some boats, some buoys, some
lights on land, and then the sun came up. We put on our finish line gear in the
last couple miles, and then our escort boat came right up next to us. We took
the jib down, sailed into the channel behind them, and then after we dropped
the main, they side-tied to us and towed us into the marina. We had such a huge
welcome from friends and other sailors on the dock. Raife and I met a bunch of
Bob and Lori’s friends and the Sea Star crew, and have gotten to know them a
bit. They are a fabulous bunch, and we were so happy to see many of their faces
and get hugs from them as we got in.
The ground moved ... a lot ... for days! Haha. We both knew it
would but I was surprised how bad it was. The dock was moving. Except it
wasn’t. But I was sure it was. I asked multiple times – “But this part is
moving, right?” That took a few days to get over. Worse for me – I haven’t been
able to sleep well since we got in. I have awakened every two or three hours each night and have had
trouble getting back to sleep. My joints hurt, but worse than that I’ve been
having dreams (nightmares?) about the boat. One night, I went to the bathroom
in the middle of the night and said something about the spinnaker as I was
crawling back into bed (literally crawling across the entire bed like an
animal). Raife asked what I was saying and I told him I hadn’t taken the kite
down, so it might still be up. A couple days after that, I was driving the
boat, and Raife tried to talk to me. I told him I couldn’t talk because I was
driving the boat, and then started to come to. I asked him, “I’m not on the
boat, am I?” Last night, I slept a bit better for the first time. Tonight, my
own bed.
It was really quite an adventure, and a test. The mental part of a race like this is the most challenging part by far. It's a marathon; not a sprint. Endurance matters. You are going to hurt. You are going to be apart from people you love. You are going to see things that scare you. You have to be able to talk yourself out of thinking about any of the bad things that could happen. You must get along with the rest of the crew. You cannot stop. You do not get to pull over at a rest stop and stretch your legs or take a nap. When it’s your turn, you drive the boat. That’s all you get to do (at least double-handed without power).
[Another aside: I have sailed a lot of miles on a similar boat - a Santa Cruz 27 named Kokopelli. We always had trouble with solar power on Kokopelli despite the skipper being a very smart guy and an engineer. I went into the Hang 20 program very skeptical, but the system was working really well before we left, and we had tons of backup devices to make sure we got there. We also did a minimal amount of lightning preparedness, as that was the only thing that was likely to kill 9 different devices that showed our lat/long position. Because the system was working and installed by an electrician, I moved past my discomfort with a solar-only system and gave it full open-minded try. I am back to a very healthy distrust for it.]
After a little decompression, I can say I am very glad I did it double-handed. I learned a ton, got to do some real troubleshooting, and got more time at the helm than I probably will over the next ten years. I can picture some circumstances that would convince me to do it again, but in 2024, I’m hoping for a bigger boat with a full crew. All-in-all, an excellent experience – one of a kind. Huge thanks to Lori for making it possible.
We’ll post a slideshow soon. For now, one photo at the start (photo credit Raife Neuman), and
one at the finish.
