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Pacific Cup 2008 - Le Flying Fish - Day 5 |
As I write this email we're about to go below 1,300nm to the finish. Always good for the morale to reach those milestones. Over the last couple days we've been working our way south to try to avoid the high pressure (meaning lighter winds) coming down on us. Today the wind direction is not as cooperative so we cannot go down as much as we would like to. We'll see over the next day or so if our southerly option will have paid off to try to remain in stronger winds/waves.
We can now feel the sun behind the clouds, finally... At least the day is short and t-shirt and the nights are mild. The boat and our foulies are dry. It makes life so much more enjoyable.
As part of the trip I brought 72 paper boats. The project started with a simple piece of paper at St Isidore School in Danville,CA. The 2nd graders wrote some 'get well' notes and then folded them as paper boats. Those paper boats are now sailing across the Pacific Ocean. You can see where they are if you go to the Pacific Cup website (pacificcup.org) and look for Le Flying Fish in the satellite tracking section. Once in Hawaii, JP and I will personally deliver those "paper boats/get well notes" to the kids of Children's Hospital of Honolulu. We cannot wait to see those kids' faces when they realize what journey their paper boat has gone through. They might not even want to unfold the boat to read the get well note...
Stephane |
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Pacific Cup 2008 - Le Flying Fish - Day 4 |
Still grey out there but we're getting into warmer latitudes. It feels good to remove some layers. As I write this email we have 1,500nm left to the finish line. However we'll be sailing many more miles, looking for favorable winds and waves to get there faster.
I'll try to answer some common questions about the trip:
- What do you bring on board the boat? It is a small boat but we need to bring everything we need for 2 weeks. Below is a summary list:
sails: 1 mainsail, 2 jibs (#2 and #3), 4 spinnakers (two .6, one .9, one 1.5), a trysail and a storm jib
safety: liferaft, epirb, man over board pole, lifesling, flares...
communication: SSB radio, VHF radio, satellite phone, laptop...
food: 16 days of freeze dried food, breakfast and snack items, fruits, camping stove and 30 gallons of water boat items: outboard, gas, anchor, tool box, parts
navigation: 2 gps, 1 compass
personal stuff: foulies, lifejacket, sleeping bag, boots, sun block...
- Do you sail the boat back to California? No, we ship the trailer to Hawaii and bring the boat back on the trailer in a ship.
- Why would you sail to Hawaii for 2 weeks when you can fly to Hawaii in 5 hours and then spend 2 weeks on the beach? Too difficult to explain this one... Let's say it's a childhood dream. Where I come from in Brittany offshore sailing, especially short handed sailing, is a very popular sport. I grew up dreaming about Eric Tabarly's adventures and today I get to experience it (at my own level of course).
- What do you do when you're off watch? Sleep is the primary thing to do but you also have to eat, check the weather, do some navigation, report our position... It is quite busy, the days and nights go really fast.
Have a great weekend,
Stephane |
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Pacific Cup 2008 - Le Flying Fish - day 3 |
Today I saw a patch of blue sky and the sun... but it was short lived, maybe 20 minutes and it went away. Back to cloudy sky, no moon, no stars. We're really waiting for the sun to come out, hopefully tomorrow.
Last night was a wild night, reaching high all night, it was a wet night. The boat and everything in it was quite wet as well. It was quite a miserable environment so we pushed our night watches to 3 hours so we don't have to put the wet foulies back on too many times.
We had our 3rd freeze dried food meal tonight: Macaroni and Cheese. We're skipping a lot of the meals to eat the apples, oranges, bananas, carrots and snacks. Just quicker than freeze dried food, if that's possible ;-)
Since yesterday afternoon we're headed towards Hawaii. There will be options to play later on but for the moment we think that rhumb line is the best option. This morning we had a little over 1,700 nm to go. Still a lot of sailing to do.
Tonight we just hoisted the spinnaker for the first time, just before the night came. The boat was lively reaching under the jib top but now it is even another degree of balance to find by yourself, especially that there is not much light out there. When we'll be able to see the moon it will make things easier to read the waves.
I'm going to download the latest grib files to check what the wind forecast is expected to be over the next 4 days. We'll see if that changes our strategy. And then I need to get some sleep...
Stephane |
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Pacific Cup 2008 - Le Flying Fish - Day 2 |
Cloudy everywhere but we have wind, about 12-15knts. We're moving along under our jib top. We can see 2 boats around us but too far away to know who they are.
We continue to change watch every 2 hours during the night and every 3 to 4 hours during the day. Slowly getting into a rhythm. It will be much nicer when we can get rid of our foulies... but I guess we have to wait for that moment a little longer. Hawaii has to be earned...
Still no SSB radio but we do relays with Nathalie and Nathen from Elise through Sat phones. Great competitive spirit! We will have to buy them a lot of mai thai once in Hawaii to thank them.
Recidivist crew: I'm sure you guys are so ready for tomorrow's start. We're going to try to keep our lead all the way to Hawaii... Make sure you make some pit stops once in a while along the way.
Special 'hello' to the Children's Hospital & Research Center Foundation staff. Hope you're enjoying the race so far... a lot more to go.
Stephane
PS: To my 2 little Sea Lions... go get those Stingrays! Have a great swim meet. |
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Pacific Cup 2008 - Le Flying Fish - Day 1 |
First day at sea... things are settling down slowly. Trying to get into a rhythm. For us the race started when we left the dock as our engine didn't want to get in gear. We started sailing 'upwind', it was not looking good to make the start on time until we got a tow all the way out of the Alameda Esturary from a super nice guy.. We sailed the rest of the way to San Francisco making our start just by 10 minutes. What a relief...
It was some close racing with the other 2 Moore 24, then later in the afternoon we started taking different options... we probably won't see each other until the finish line. Last night we had 2 boats sail very close to us. Acacia with who we tried to do a radio check (more on this later). During the night Mirage came to say hello. Since there was very little wind it was easy to talk from one boat to the other.
This morning we missed the roll call. No luck with our SSB radio. Yesterday we tried to connect to Children's Hour (informal call) but couldn't. We checked all the connections and many other things but no luck. This morning we were unable to report our position. Luckily Elise had their satellite phone on and they relayed our position. Merci Elise! Because we cannot listen to 'roll call' we don't know the position of our competitors. Oh well, we'll find out in Hawaii.
Only slept 4 hours yesterday. Need to do some catch up... Besides dinner last night (beef stew - freeze dried) we have been skipping the other meals, just snacking on what some handy. We'll try to start the regular meals tonight.
We are currently sailing with our jib top (#2), moving along quite nicely around 6 knots. The wind picked up early afternoon and turned right, what we were waiting for. Little by little we've been organizing the boat to make our space more livable. The sun is trying to peak through the clouds but with very little success. Couple more days and hopefully we'll get some nice sunny days, remove some layers and think about the first shower. |
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Mount Gay conducted a Silent Auction at the Bon Voyage party at the San Francisco Yacht Club. About a thousand dollars was raised for "the kids" of the Children's Hospital & Research Center of Oakland. What a wonderful news... Merci, merci, merci Mount Gay! Also, we'd like to thank the Pacific Cup organization for their support and all the sailors and their family members for participating in this fundraising effort. Sailors on a Mission. |
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