07/08/2009, 23 48'N:136 41'W,
Hello to all,
This is the wipeout king mast monkey polar bear keel hauler, William Richard Liles, come to give you a different punta de vista on this crazy ride we all voluntarily signed up for. There will be no weather information, sail changes, or otherwise unintelligible sailing talk for all the non sailors to snooze through here. What you will find instead is pure pacific adventuring synthesized and percolated as strong as the jet fuel that keeps us going in the middle of the night.
The only way to describe what we are doing right now is being a twelve year old riding down the biggest hill in the neighborhood and dropping into it on your speediest bicycle without an breaks. Its really fast and really fun but your knuckles are white and there are more than a few explicative laden moments. On top of that every other kid in the neighborhood is doing the same trying to get to the bottom of the hill where there's a big pot of candy (or in this case hula girls, duh) so instead of any incentive to use brakes (had there been any) you grease up the wheels, put your best cards in the spokes, clip in so you don't go flying into the night, and hold on for one wild ride. As if that wasn't enough your best friend is sitting on the handle bars holding his enormous pet dog on a leash who's pulling you faster but could at any moment send you straight into the pavement. Are you beginning to get what this is like?
Far and away the best part of the whole gig though is the people doing it with you, your best friend on the handlebars. You're with these people all day every day and know more about their daily habits than you would ever want to and have heard all their best jokes seven times. Everybody is sleep deprived, last night I looked at my watch and it said three thirty and I got confused and thought what on earth would I be doing up at three thirty my watch must be wrong. and then I remembered that it definitely is three thirty and there's still two and a half hours before I can crawl back to bed. At four in the morning when your all hopped up on coffee everything seems hilarious. Some of it is, some isn't, some is quickly forgotten and the very best gets repeated so often that everybody's laughing before half of the joke is said. The boat stinks, everybody stinks, you can take three showers and you'll still stink, you'll just smell like flowery soapy stink. Every now and then you g et a whiff of something rank and you smell yourself and you don't know if its you or the person next to you but it doesn't matter til you get to Hawaii anyway because it will take several showers to feel human again. To still function with all the sleep deprivation and hard work we need fuel and we are no where near starving.seriously who eats enormous ribeyes in the middle of the pacific while racing besides those crazy boys (and girl) from tejas?
But who am I kidding? This thing is a cakewalk. we're being escorted by humpback whales all the way to Hawaii, sailing under picture perfect rainbows and pulling into floating motels every evening to watch the sunset from the comfort of a hammock on the balcony and the only complaint is when the continental breakfast runs out of your favorite type of bagel before you can get there. We are doing this for fun right?
Have to go now, time for the unofficial mast monkey to make sure all is well at the top of the treehouse. Ooh ooh Ahh Ahh
Will
07/07/2009, 24 41'N:132 25'W, A Day from Half Way
Welcome to day 6 of the Transpac race sailing onboard Passion.
We left off before lunch yesterday and it was a wonderful lunch with fresh fruit and whole wheat with ham with either Swiss or cheddar cheese cooked in a hot pan with a little butter on it to brown the bread a very delicious meal. Dinner was a fresh spinach salad with sliced red peppers and onions the main course included stuffed pasta shells filled with alfredo crab meat sauce and a slice of soda bread
Suzie is also performing magic by making ice when we charge the batteries and make water. I think we might be in for another surprise.
The weather is starting to warm up last night most of the crew lost the fleece and just donned their foul weather gear. We are still in 62 degree water. With the wind aft we have lost some of the chill due to apparent wind. It will be a couple of more days before we are losing the foul weather tops then two more before we get down to shorts and t-shirts. The overcast weather has limited the view of the moon at night and kept the sun off of us during the day. We did see more of the moon last night and it was nice to sail with some light at night. We still wear sunscreen and are drinking lots of water.
We have the � A kite up and at 7 AM on Monday we added the staysail to the mix. The first one over 12 knots was Jim he hit 12.4. Second on the 12 knot board was Bill also at 12.4. We have 12 to 17 Knots of WS from 0 to 40 degrees. We are able to maintain a heading of between 215 to 240 depending on the wind speed and direction. We are in our fast forward mode. Sail the boat wherever you can go 10 knots. We have set a waypoint we would like to get to of 24N and 135W while we have the current wind angle. Our thought behind this is the grib files are always 20 to 50 degrees to the right of what we experience and a couple of knots low. It will also allow us to close with the boats to our south. With the tracking devices we are able to see our strategy is the same as our competition. It appears that the boats farther south are in a couple of knots more wind and are able to maintain a � knot more speed . We are still trying to soak down in front of them.
That was till 4AM when we thought we caught something on the keel. We dropped the chute and turned head to wind to back down and lose whatever it was. Did not completely lose it and were a little sluggish the rest of the watch . The next watch felt like they got rid of it and we are now blasting along with the � A kite up and 18 to 22 knots of wind bouncing around 11 to 14 knots, Passions does enjoy the downwind ride and the long Pacific swell.
Well after I woke up and wrote most of today's news I went on deck in shorts and a t-shirt and realized that I will still need the follies, it is still cool on deck. Before I could get back down below Will jumped the record speed for the race up to 15.4 at 9:45 AM 7/7/9. Wait there is more news, at 9:59 AM will recorded the first broach of the race, it was a doozie. Blew out the staysail and move some of the can good from the open cupboard where yours truly was standing preparing my breakfast. I was fast enough to catch the can goods and save my toes. All is back to normal on board. Now Mark has raised the daily record bar to 15.8 kt boat speed and with 24kt TWS we are considering changing to the 1.5 oz kite.
Got some bad news on the 6AM roll call we are down to 4th in class and 31st in fleet. We are the second most west boat and still need to soak down to the boats to the south. According to the routing software we still have 5 days to make that happen,
Down below is still in good shape, with all the sails stacked on the weather rail we have room to move around. The boat is very dry now and we have not had to bail in over 24 hours and looking down at my feet we will not have to any time soon.
Personal and boat hygiene is being taken care of. A couple of the guys took advantage of the hot water heater and took a deck shower yesterday. The beards are showing some nice growth with more grey than I remember from the last race. Guess that is what happens as you get older.
Carter's I pod has replaced the radio margaritaville. The young man has a very nice selection of tunes. Some of I have even heard. So the tunes are going 24/7 we sometimes turn them down when we are trying to perform a sail change.
We still have 1450 miles to go this morning and the routing software says it will take 5+ days so we are looking for a late Sunday or early Monday finish. Wow only 5 days away.
Later, and still waiting to see the full moon over the Pacific, signing off from the SV Passion located at 24.5. N and 131.5W only 1450 miles from Hawaii (getting closer every day)
07/06/2009, 25 57'N:128 08'W, Pacific Ocean
Good day for all those who are back at work and now have a high speed internet connection.
I left you yesterday I was headed up on deck to check with Billy on what was happening. While we were discussing sails it looked like we could carry the Code O, so up it went at 10:10AM speed was up and off we went straight to Hawaii. I was glad to see the heavy 1 on the deck for a while. We had long discussion whether we should even take the heavy one with us, even had a rating without it and it saved us 460 seconds. someone would have been in hot water if it was on the dock back in LA. The sail has been up most of the trip so far.
Well as you know from other articles the wind changes a lot and we had long discussion about what to do as we sailed below our plotted course to Hawaii. We decided to leave the Code O up and sagged further south until the wind backed and then we were happy we had it flying. With the forecast for the wind to back and build we felt good about where we were with our class. We are the second farthest north boat. Only time will tell if we are as smart as we think we are. The discussion on wind changes and sail selection happens all day.
At 3:30 PM the wind had backed to 010 and we decided to set the ¾ A kite the turquoise one and head wherever it took us. We managed the sail change with 5 people on deck and we were glad we did not have to wake up all the off watch. Good news it was taking us to our next imaginary waypoint 24 N and 135 W. All during the day the wind kept moving around and we were making ground. When we received the report from the tracking people showing the other boats we were all in agreement in what to do.
After dinner and on thru the night the wind picked up and we saw some 16 knot gust and boats speeds in the 10 knot range. The boat is much happier at these wind speeds and angles. We were able to sail a TWA of 125 to 130 with an AWA of 95 to 105, all the time keeping the boat on her feet. This is made a little easier due to the fact all the sails are stacked on the weather rail and the starboard water tank is full providing us with lots of stability.
Has anyone noticed that I have not talked much about tacking or jibing? Since we have left Catalina we have been on starboard tack and it looks like we will stay on Starboard for a few more days.
Now to the LEAK, we kept tracing it down to the head area with some ingenious detective work. Once it was located Gary went to work on actually finding it. First we looked into the lockers where we found standing water. There he located a broken hose clamp and a loose hose clamp on the Y valve. Yahoo we have solved the problem and we start cleaning up the bilge in the main cabin. When we start the final mop up in the head sure enough the area where the Y valve is located was dry BUT the area around the thru hull was still wet. Gary goes back to work and decided that the hose on top is so old and dry it will not fit tighten to the fitting. He comes up with a way to make a gasket to give the hose something to bite on when he applies the hose clamp over the top of the thru hull fitting and now we have a dry boat. Not quite turns out the answer, the bottom of the valve which screws onto the actual thru hull is still dripping but just a drop every couple of minutes. Prudent minds said to leave the small leak alone until we had the boat out of the water. Better a small drip than a 1.2 inch hole in the bottom of the boat. Good news is this morning we are pretty dry and we have made significant progress.
The leak consumed all the efforts on the boat and Chef Suzie had to postpone breakfast until 12 noon. So officially we missed breakfast so she made it up to us with a Crust less Quiche with English Scones covered with a dollop of butter and strawberry jam. She also had some Paces picante sauce for the diehards.
With the ¾ A kite up and pulling we had a delightful dinner. Suzie made some fresh cilantro cut up some onions, lettuce, and peppers and added the left over steak from last night all wrapped up in a fresh torrtilla wrap. A great start to a nice evening of off wind sailing.
I understand that the menus today will provide some surprises. I will fill you in tomorrow on what Suzie cooks up.
With the cloud cover we not able to actual see the moon. But with it hiding behind the clouds you can still see quite well. Carter remembers the last crossing and has remarked a couple of time what a big difference a full moon is even if you can not see it.
Morning came with the skies still overcast and the wind still bouncing around with a TWD from 350 to 25 and WS from 7 to 16 knots.
With the weather and meals we have had so far you might think you were on a cruise except for the lack of showers. The temperatures have been great so far warmer than the last trip and cool enough to sleep. A few more cloudless nights so we could really enjoy the full moon would be nice. You know there is not much nicer way to spend an evening than sailing along with the chute up watching the moon rise over the water. Maybe we will see the moon tonight.
Till later signing off from the SV Passion located at 26.17N and 122.28W only 1688 miles from Hawaii (getting closer every day)
