Here is the last post for the Team of Azure for the 2017 Transpac. We want to thank everyone who followed us and our wonderful wives. I especially wanted to give a shout-out to Nani Daniels who designed and produced the most amazing boat lei for our finish. Azure is on her trailer being loaded on a ship headed for San Diego. Our next adventure will be driving her up I-5 at 55mph. This is the best way to get around Point Conception for sure. See everyone on the water!

Azure crossed the finish line at 23:39 Hawaii time Sunday night. The crew was exhausted musing about all the spinnaker changes to get to the finish. The navigation decisions and push at the end seems to have paid off b/c Azure is listed as first in Division 7!
There was a fantastic turn out to greet the guys - Joe and crew from Hawaii Yacht Club brought an amazing spread of food and drinks, Dayna, Jen, Wayne, EYCers Hal, Laurie, Charlie, David, Susan w/ her local friends and leis. A special visit by the crew of Medusa was a nice surprise! They heard Azures favorite beer was Lagunitas so they scoured the local stores and were there to thank the guys for the mid ocean fuel exchange.
The celebration lasted until 3:00 am. More insights posted later from Rodney and crew. I think it's going to be a lazy day

Land Ho!. We are 44 miles away from our gibe mark in the Molokai channel, and then a quick 8 mile to the finish. We celebrated our landfall with curry chicken and last happy hour with vodka and OJ with our last four ice cubes. Did I ever tell you Jim was good at math!

We are in a close battle for first in class with a Cubaneren, from Norway. We have all been pushing the boat as hard as we can., and all are very tired. I am looking forward to a long hot shower and bed that says in one place. We are also looking forward to seeing our friends and family (especially my Jane) on the dock. We should arrive in the marina by 1am local time, which is very late for a party, even by EYC standards.

Aloha, Rodney

We are 226 miles away from Honolulu and looking forward to our arrival. We made the final gibe toward Hawaii last night and are doing everything we can to keep the boat moving fast.

We are supposed to arrive by early Monday morning, but it is difficult to judge arrival times from so far away. We are firmly in squall territory. You can see them coming over the horizon one after another. Today we had a 38 knot gust next to one, and just got our spinnaker down in time. We have our light spinnaker back up and and are pushing hard.

I looked in the fridge tonight and noticed we only have enough ice for one more happy hour, so we must be close to Hawaii. Capt Ron would be proud. We had our last chili tonight with vodka cranberry.

We are 423 miles away from Honolulu and it is Hot Hot Hot. We are about to make our last gibe for Hawaii and are excited to be on the home stretch. We have unfortunately dropped to second place, but we are hoping our hotter angle will close the gap.

Did I say it was Hot! When we are not on deck sailing, we are down in the cabin with the fans going. Since we are under four days from Hawaii, and we have four days of water in our last water tank, It is shower Day! Not only showers, we did laudry too. Since I have been wearing the same sun pants for 11, and shirt for six days, I figured laundry was a good idea. Tony has his on the lifeline also, and I am sure Ted and Jim will follow. We were four stinky boys.

The sea life is getting pretty amazing. We have seen turtles, whales, dolphins, lots of sea birds, and Tony's favorite albatross. Every morning we sweep the decks of flying fish and squid. I was on watch last night when all of a sudden I heard a thud right next to me on the cabin top. There was a little unfortunate flying fish lying there. I wonder what it is like to get hit by one of those torpedoes?

We celebrated Ted's last day of work and retirement today. He requested turkey Tetrazzini with orange juice and rum for his special day. Amazing - he does not seem like he has been working over the last few weeks. All of us are envious.

We are 542 miles away from Honolulu and trying to make some southerly. Our routing software keeps telling us to go west. It is very hard to keep going in the wrong direction with the anticipation of favorable winds, but alas we are pushing west. We have second guessed our software 3 times now, and each time we were spanked.

At 4:00 am I went over the optimal route with Ted at the beginning of his shift. The software was telling us to gibe around this area in front of us, but we could not understand why, so we just decided to keep going straight. Ted woke me up at 4:00 am, with a concerned look on his face - we gotta go! That means gibe in sailing lingo. I came up on deck and looked forward to see a big black cloud as far and you can see with bolts of lightning hitting all around the center. "I don't think we should go in there" Ted says. Gibe! Jim drove and Ted and I pulled off one of the fasted two pole jibes on record. We were thankfully paralleling the back of the cloud when the sun came up. Then we saw the most spectacular double rainbow for the entire 180 degrees of the cloud - amazing. At first we thought it was a squall that should travel at about 10 knots but this cloud was not moving. We just skirted the monster and all is good, I kept thinking of the joke Jim would tell about the clown who died in his second rodeo.

Now we are cruising to our last gibe point about 100 miles ahead of us, then we are "all in" for our final approach. If all works out we should have a strong finish. We are getting pretty low on food and beverages but should be in Hawaii on the 17th. I keep looking at that small bag of ice and wonder is there may have been a misscalculation - we will see.

Sail faster damnit!