Coming off midnight watch yet again. Something different to watch, tonight, though. The glow of the Eastern and North shores of Oahu towns of Kaneohe and Hau'ula are clearly visible and we can see the beacons on top of the ridge. We're about 25 miles out, sailing a really nice close reach in fairly smooth seas with great phosphorescence! If we can keep close to our present 7 knots, we're looking at another 3.5 hours or so. Some lightning in the distance promises maybe one more little shot of excitement before we shut it down. One more nap for me, then a Mai Tai, a Lei, and a hug from Lydia and the kiddos. Can't wait!
Whiskey Delta Bravo 2898 VALIS out
Yep, I'm sailing the PacCup again for 2014. We'll be covering over 2,000 miles and two weeks in Paul Elliot's beautiful VALIS, starting in San Francisco Bay and ending up in Kaneohe, Oahu. Our only connection to you will be via a puny satellite connection, so I can't send pics till we hit land, but if it all works right I should be able to update this blog once in a while. I look forward to reading your comments when I get back. Aloha! -Other Paul
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
Monday, July 21, 2014
22.18.700N 157.16.560W
Yep, we're pretty close. About 57 nautical miles to be exact. Everybody looking for land.
So here's the deal with Sweet Okole. It's an absolutely legendary icon of ocean racing. One of the first successes for designer Bruce Farr, and a boat that forever changed the shape of offshore yachts. I had a picture of it on my bedroom wall as a youth. And here I was this morning, rendering assistance to the one and only Sweet Okole, disabled in the Pacific just North of Hawaii. We sailed an intercept course all night and tracked down the wounded vessel, despite their lack of radio. We improvised a method of collecting diesel from out own tanks into one gallon water jugs and transferred them to Sweet Okole in fairly rough seas. We also gave them our spare rudder and they were in high spirits when we left them some 5 hours after we found them. All of this obviously significantly delayed our finish, and we'll be given an adjustment by the race committee for our troubles.
But it's not about race results any more. It's all about wrapping up another adventure on the Pacific and joining my family on Oahu in the next few hours. We're tired, and smelly, but my wife & kids are getting a huge hug shortly whether they like it or not. I'm going on deck to look for land. Will probably NOT have my head wedged against a pad to keep my eyes in sync with the motion of the room next time I send one of these entries. I hope to get some pictures and videos up, and hear from all of y'all real soon.
For(hopefully) the last time at sea for PacCup 2014; Whiskey Delta Bravo 2898 VALIS out.
So here's the deal with Sweet Okole. It's an absolutely legendary icon of ocean racing. One of the first successes for designer Bruce Farr, and a boat that forever changed the shape of offshore yachts. I had a picture of it on my bedroom wall as a youth. And here I was this morning, rendering assistance to the one and only Sweet Okole, disabled in the Pacific just North of Hawaii. We sailed an intercept course all night and tracked down the wounded vessel, despite their lack of radio. We improvised a method of collecting diesel from out own tanks into one gallon water jugs and transferred them to Sweet Okole in fairly rough seas. We also gave them our spare rudder and they were in high spirits when we left them some 5 hours after we found them. All of this obviously significantly delayed our finish, and we'll be given an adjustment by the race committee for our troubles.
But it's not about race results any more. It's all about wrapping up another adventure on the Pacific and joining my family on Oahu in the next few hours. We're tired, and smelly, but my wife & kids are getting a huge hug shortly whether they like it or not. I'm going on deck to look for land. Will probably NOT have my head wedged against a pad to keep my eyes in sync with the motion of the room next time I send one of these entries. I hope to get some pictures and videos up, and hear from all of y'all real soon.
For(hopefully) the last time at sea for PacCup 2014; Whiskey Delta Bravo 2898 VALIS out.
23.25.834N 155.55.300W
We're inside of 200 miles, but Astute observers will note that we've veered oddly to the West. Well, here's why: Unfortunately, Sweet Okole has lost their rudder 200 miles short of Oahu and require assistance. We are the closest boat, so it's VALIS to the rescue. We've diverted to intercept them in approx. 6 hours. No idea how long we'll be with them, so really don't know how it affects our ETA.. If they've turned the delay off on the tracker, you should be able to see both us and them in real time.
Lots happened today, but we need the computer otherwise, so here's the very quick Cliff's notes:
Was visited by a Pilot Whale. About 20' long, swam right beside the cockpit of the boat for maybe 10 minutes, I could've hit him with a broom. We've got an Albatross sitting on the solar panel. Apparently he's pooped, and wanted a ride. Been there for 3 hours, looks like he plans to stay all night. More later...
Lots happened today, but we need the computer otherwise, so here's the very quick Cliff's notes:
Was visited by a Pilot Whale. About 20' long, swam right beside the cockpit of the boat for maybe 10 minutes, I could've hit him with a broom. We've got an Albatross sitting on the solar panel. Apparently he's pooped, and wanted a ride. Been there for 3 hours, looks like he plans to stay all night. More later...
Sunday, July 20, 2014
25.26.329N 153.43.233W
Midnight watch again.
It's odd to call it midnight because there was still light in the sky at 10:45. We'll go on Hawaiian time when we get there, but we stay Californian till then, so our clock and the sun are getting really out of whack.
Nice day today. Spent most of the day on an easy reach with the spinnaker up. Yep, you read that right. The skipper caved and we got to pick it up a little. Actually, I waited till he was occupied on the radio (we're the communications boat for the fleet, coordinating assistance, doing rollcallls and position reports, etc.) so he spends a LOT of time working on that. So I let him get all tied up in that, then real sneaky like put the chute up so that it was all flying nice when he poked his head out, so what could he say? "Keep up the good work," We got to use it till late agternoon when a mini-squall encouraged us to not push our luck, so down it came.
Picked up 3 flying fish off the deck this morning. Saw scads more of them through the day. No other boats or wildlife of note. Awesome sunset. & best stargazing yet. Milky Way looks painted on. Had some good tunes on the cockpit speakers. Swells might have gotten to 10 feet today, but long easy ones. Not over 5 feet right now but a little confused, so I'm probably making all kinds of typos. Jogging along now in 12-15 knots on a loose reach going about 8 knots. Should be a nice sleep, which I'm gonna hit real quick.
Getting excited about seeing Lydia and the kids. If all goes according to plan, they'll be on the dock when we hit Kaneohe Yacht Club. Looks like that'll be about 2 more days.
P.S. I gave AIS a final check before signing off and it showed an unidentified craft 30 miles away on a collision crossing course going 15 knots which puts them in our lap in 2 hours. Either one of the big fast racers or a fishing boat, no doubt. So I warned the crew on deck to keep an eye out for em. First boat contact all day.
Whiskey Delta Bravo 2898 VALIS out
It's odd to call it midnight because there was still light in the sky at 10:45. We'll go on Hawaiian time when we get there, but we stay Californian till then, so our clock and the sun are getting really out of whack.
Nice day today. Spent most of the day on an easy reach with the spinnaker up. Yep, you read that right. The skipper caved and we got to pick it up a little. Actually, I waited till he was occupied on the radio (we're the communications boat for the fleet, coordinating assistance, doing rollcallls and position reports, etc.) so he spends a LOT of time working on that. So I let him get all tied up in that, then real sneaky like put the chute up so that it was all flying nice when he poked his head out, so what could he say? "Keep up the good work," We got to use it till late agternoon when a mini-squall encouraged us to not push our luck, so down it came.
Picked up 3 flying fish off the deck this morning. Saw scads more of them through the day. No other boats or wildlife of note. Awesome sunset. & best stargazing yet. Milky Way looks painted on. Had some good tunes on the cockpit speakers. Swells might have gotten to 10 feet today, but long easy ones. Not over 5 feet right now but a little confused, so I'm probably making all kinds of typos. Jogging along now in 12-15 knots on a loose reach going about 8 knots. Should be a nice sleep, which I'm gonna hit real quick.
Getting excited about seeing Lydia and the kids. If all goes according to plan, they'll be on the dock when we hit Kaneohe Yacht Club. Looks like that'll be about 2 more days.
P.S. I gave AIS a final check before signing off and it showed an unidentified craft 30 miles away on a collision crossing course going 15 knots which puts them in our lap in 2 hours. Either one of the big fast racers or a fishing boat, no doubt. So I warned the crew on deck to keep an eye out for em. First boat contact all day.
Whiskey Delta Bravo 2898 VALIS out
Saturday, July 19, 2014
27.15.290N 151.47.663W
Coming off midnight watch.
Quite a bit of stuff going on out here on the general intersesting experiences front, not so much on the race front, since your last update. Let's just get the race stuff out of the way. The boss has pulled the plug on the race. No official announcement has been made, but today was a stunning sunny day with wind on the aft quarter at 10-15 knots. Absolutely perfect spinnaker weather, but we sort of rolled along underpowered under main and #1 genoa all day.For my non-sailing friends, that's tooling down the racetrack at maybe 2/3 throttle. Not sure why the extreme conservatism, but it's his boat, so his call.
On the upside, and the upside is huge, we spent all day in glorious sunshine on one heck of a nice boat. During last night it became obvious that we were passing some underwater feature of note, because the previouslyt empty sea suddenly had fishing boats on it. We passed within a mile or so of two different ones durning the night, saw another in the morning, then finally came within a couple of hundred yards of being run down by one around midday. Had to call the guy on the radio and get him to change course. Coming straight at us at a range so close we could see him looking out the door of the bridge when we hailed. Yikes! Would've felt stupid having a collision with the only other boat in sight over 600 miles from land. Looking at the chart, we were passing over a series of seamounts that no doubt caused an upwelling that made the fishery. The sea floor for hundreds of miles has been around 12,00-14,0000 feet deep, and these mounts cut it down to more like 3,000. So not exactly a shoal, but a pretty signigicant bump in the bottom Speaking of fish, two huge Mahi Mahi came alongside and zoomed along with us about 8 knots for roughly a half hour. They were chasing flying fish and using us to help herd them, I think. Gorgeous fish with unbelievably effortless speed.
Flying fish all over the place, by the way The sea, even though it's all just water, really has a different look in different areas. We are solidly in the bluewater tropics. Tradewinds, flying fish, bnig bright gamefish, sparkling blue sky and water. It's a different look completely from the albatrosses and scuddy clouds of a few days ago, and the foggy California coast seems a world away.
Well I gotta be on deck again in a few hours.
Whiskey Delta Bravo 2898 VALIS out.
Quite a bit of stuff going on out here on the general intersesting experiences front, not so much on the race front, since your last update. Let's just get the race stuff out of the way. The boss has pulled the plug on the race. No official announcement has been made, but today was a stunning sunny day with wind on the aft quarter at 10-15 knots. Absolutely perfect spinnaker weather, but we sort of rolled along underpowered under main and #1 genoa all day.For my non-sailing friends, that's tooling down the racetrack at maybe 2/3 throttle. Not sure why the extreme conservatism, but it's his boat, so his call.
On the upside, and the upside is huge, we spent all day in glorious sunshine on one heck of a nice boat. During last night it became obvious that we were passing some underwater feature of note, because the previouslyt empty sea suddenly had fishing boats on it. We passed within a mile or so of two different ones durning the night, saw another in the morning, then finally came within a couple of hundred yards of being run down by one around midday. Had to call the guy on the radio and get him to change course. Coming straight at us at a range so close we could see him looking out the door of the bridge when we hailed. Yikes! Would've felt stupid having a collision with the only other boat in sight over 600 miles from land. Looking at the chart, we were passing over a series of seamounts that no doubt caused an upwelling that made the fishery. The sea floor for hundreds of miles has been around 12,00-14,0000 feet deep, and these mounts cut it down to more like 3,000. So not exactly a shoal, but a pretty signigicant bump in the bottom Speaking of fish, two huge Mahi Mahi came alongside and zoomed along with us about 8 knots for roughly a half hour. They were chasing flying fish and using us to help herd them, I think. Gorgeous fish with unbelievably effortless speed.
Flying fish all over the place, by the way The sea, even though it's all just water, really has a different look in different areas. We are solidly in the bluewater tropics. Tradewinds, flying fish, bnig bright gamefish, sparkling blue sky and water. It's a different look completely from the albatrosses and scuddy clouds of a few days ago, and the foggy California coast seems a world away.
Well I gotta be on deck again in a few hours.
Whiskey Delta Bravo 2898 VALIS out.
Friday, July 18, 2014
28.52.381N 149.33.901W
Coming off midnight watch.
The time thing is getting weirder. As I explained before, we stay on California time till the race is over, but that means our clocks get further ahead of the sun the further west we go. So the sun went down tonight at 10:30 our time.
Beautiful sunny day clouded over rigfht at sunset to turn into a hell of a gloomy dark night. We collide with a squall every 90 minutes or so and our wind goes from20 to low 30's, changes direction (20 degree header for sailors) and it rains for about 10 minutes, then it all goes back to like it was. You are pretty much on instrument flight rules because it's too dark to see anything else. Eyes glued to the True Wind speed, apparent wind speed and direction, boat speed, and heading. You gotta quickly but without overreacting spin the big wheel to keep all those gages in the right ranges. It's hectic for 3-5 minutes,each time a squall cranks up, then it settles down.
Really good bioluminessence tonight. Bright green sparkles trailing off in our wake like a twin tailed comet. You can see the bursts of green light all out in the gloom where waves are breaking on the surface of the sea. Once in a while, we hit a kind of jellyfish that makes a bright green explosion about the size of a volleyballl. It's pretty neat.
Please excuse my typos. I'm not siure if i've explained it, but I'm typing on a smallish screen at the nav station. There's a pad on the wall next to my head that I have to press against to keep my eyes in sync with the boat movement well enough to see what I'm typing. Right now, we're rolling through about 20 degrees on an axis already tilted about that much, and lurching up and down roughly 8 feet every few seconds, so my typing is going to suffer.
Plus my eyes are tired, so I'm gonna go ride the bucking bunk for a couple of hours.
Whiskey Delta Bravo 2898 VALIS out
The time thing is getting weirder. As I explained before, we stay on California time till the race is over, but that means our clocks get further ahead of the sun the further west we go. So the sun went down tonight at 10:30 our time.
Beautiful sunny day clouded over rigfht at sunset to turn into a hell of a gloomy dark night. We collide with a squall every 90 minutes or so and our wind goes from20 to low 30's, changes direction (20 degree header for sailors) and it rains for about 10 minutes, then it all goes back to like it was. You are pretty much on instrument flight rules because it's too dark to see anything else. Eyes glued to the True Wind speed, apparent wind speed and direction, boat speed, and heading. You gotta quickly but without overreacting spin the big wheel to keep all those gages in the right ranges. It's hectic for 3-5 minutes,each time a squall cranks up, then it settles down.
Really good bioluminessence tonight. Bright green sparkles trailing off in our wake like a twin tailed comet. You can see the bursts of green light all out in the gloom where waves are breaking on the surface of the sea. Once in a while, we hit a kind of jellyfish that makes a bright green explosion about the size of a volleyballl. It's pretty neat.
Please excuse my typos. I'm not siure if i've explained it, but I'm typing on a smallish screen at the nav station. There's a pad on the wall next to my head that I have to press against to keep my eyes in sync with the boat movement well enough to see what I'm typing. Right now, we're rolling through about 20 degrees on an axis already tilted about that much, and lurching up and down roughly 8 feet every few seconds, so my typing is going to suffer.
Plus my eyes are tired, so I'm gonna go ride the bucking bunk for a couple of hours.
Whiskey Delta Bravo 2898 VALIS out
Thursday, July 17, 2014
29.05.6312N 148.30.501W
4:45 pm
First things first; Tiburon, you'll remember, was struggling when we left her. It turns out that Michael Morezadeh and his merry crew aboard Cayenne were in a position to help. They diverted to Tiburon and gave her their emergency water and a better emergency rudder. So, everybody's back on course to Kaneohe.
In other news, it's a magnificent day in the middle of the Pacific! Warm and sunny 15-20 knot breeze 6 foot seas, still sort of confused and lumpy, but a brilliant blue sea in the sunshine. Unfortunately, our fearless leader is a little less fearless in the wake of our rather spectacular gymnastics a couple of nights ago, so we've been toodling along rather sedately under main and winged out genoa, instead of blasting along under chute like we should. We're probably losing at least 20-30 miles a day with the super conservative approach. Oh well, no trophies this year, but there's worse places to be.
Whiskey Delta Bravo 2898 VALIS out.
First things first; Tiburon, you'll remember, was struggling when we left her. It turns out that Michael Morezadeh and his merry crew aboard Cayenne were in a position to help. They diverted to Tiburon and gave her their emergency water and a better emergency rudder. So, everybody's back on course to Kaneohe.
In other news, it's a magnificent day in the middle of the Pacific! Warm and sunny 15-20 knot breeze 6 foot seas, still sort of confused and lumpy, but a brilliant blue sea in the sunshine. Unfortunately, our fearless leader is a little less fearless in the wake of our rather spectacular gymnastics a couple of nights ago, so we've been toodling along rather sedately under main and winged out genoa, instead of blasting along under chute like we should. We're probably losing at least 20-30 miles a day with the super conservative approach. Oh well, no trophies this year, but there's worse places to be.
Whiskey Delta Bravo 2898 VALIS out.
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