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| Horizon Trans Pac 2019 Photos Courtesy of Ultimatesailing.com |
I have just returned from this year’s Trans Pac race from San Pedro California to Honolulu Hawaii 2,100 miles across the never-ending dark blue Pacific Ocean. We completed the race, aboard the Santa Cruz 50 Horizon, in 9 days 6 hours and 39 minutes which is very close to a new record for this type of boat. We placed 2nd in class and 7th overall out of 95 entries, only 12 minutes out of first place. I’ve lost a Harbor 20 race, in our harbor, by more than 12 minutes before.
I won’t bother you with the races finer details or “gremlins” as we called them on the boat. For example, a wave coming threw the galley hatch and landing on the laptop and frying it, which lead to a very unhappy navigator who mentioned the possibility of that happening before the start of the race. On the second night, we had a shiv, at the top of the mast, blow apart which chafed through one of our new halyards. Next was a type of “Who done it” when a crew member decided to open the holding tank on the boat which quickly overflowed. Our gremlin then decided to drop a winch handle in the wheel well, during a maneuver, and lock up the wheel which spun the boat out of control and we blew up our new 2A spinnaker. The propane regulator decided to freeze up which lead to missing a dinner one night, this was fixed the following morning. Then to top it off, the wind Instruments decide to crash the last five hours of the race. Most of these gremlins were caused by bad preparation on my part and have been noted. Just when I thought I was getting pretty good at this, there is always more to lean.
Gremlins where jumping from boat to boat and our problems were minuscule to many other competitors. The Santa Cruz 70 OEX had catastrophic rudder failure that caused the vessel to take on water and finally sink. Fortunately for OEX Mighty Mouse, Roy Disney on Pyewacket, was a couple of miles behind them and retrieved the crew on OEX from their emergency life-raft and saved the day! Nothing to joke about, Roy Disney saved nine sailors from the cold blue 200 miles off the California Coast and withdrew from the race and returned to Marina del Rey. Unbelievable seamanship by both crews with no loss of life. On the vessel Lucky Duck, a crew member was changing the propane tank on the stovetop and caught himself on fire 100 miles from the finish. He spent five days in the Hawaiian hospital and is doing fine, in fact, he is bringing the boat home as I write. Many boats retired from the race because of rudder problems and if that was not enough two days after the finish the skipper of Chubasco Jim Lincoln passed away in his sleep at the age of 61. The crew of Chubasco was left speechless and deeply disturbed by the loss of their friend. I met Lincoln earlier this year and was then always greeted by him with a big smile and a welcoming hello as if he was reaching out over the water to shake your hand. It goes without saying, Lincoln will be missed by many.
With all that being said let’s talk about the highlights of the race. During the race, I compared the race to a type of video game with the start of the game being relatively difficult then somewhat easier before the grand finale when everything is thrown at you at once. The race starts off easy with the light westerly breezes escorting you past Catalina and out to the outer waters where you are then greeted to 20+ knot winds and step waves. In full foul weather gear, the boat moving similar to a bucking bronco and water going over your head one hangs on for two days of hell, living sideways. In fact it is almost more dangerous inside the boat than outside in the darkness of the night. Trying to antiquate yourself to the watch system, the first time you hit the rack it is difficult to get any sleep. Then while preparing yourself to come on deck and being onetime to start your watch one needs to keep one hand on the boat and the other to put on all your gear. A couple of nasty falls occurred down below during this time of the race fortunately, no one was hurt just a little bruised and embarrassed. Then at the end of two days into the race, one is quickly remembered why we do this to ourselves. The breeze moves more behind us and the boat gets much flatter and more stable. The next 7 days are filled with warm downwind sailing with the large spinnakers up and surfing down the faces of the large Pacific waves. Life does not get better than that.
With the full moon rising in the east while the sun is setting in the west for the first part of the race we always had good light which makes sailing that much easier. For the first time, I saw a moonbow, not a rainbow or a Len Bose a moonbow. With the full moon up and a passing rain squall, one would see a moonbow I’ve never seen one before. Or course the stars are so close and clear it feels like you can reach touch them or you are in a virtual game flying between the stars. Just as one starts to relax and taking this all in the video game starts again by throwing a few obstacles in front of you like large floating trees or other types of large flotsam that if you struck might ruin your whole day. As we pushed on into the warm tropical trade winds the moon would raise a little later each night and the breeze would build into the mid-twenties and it would get so dark that you could not see the person next to you. Just about then the navigator would inform us it was time to gybe the boat which is a rather complex maneuver intensified by the increased wind, sea state and of course the darkness. While driving the boat through these maneuvers thoughts of waiting for the moon to rise or why did we not do this before the sun went down crossed my mind. I took a deep breath looked up into the stars and brought my head back down and told myself I got this. All those dark gybes we nailed and I mumbled to the navigator “ You sure know how to test my skill level.” Knowing that I still got it or maybe even better than the past does place a rather large smile on my face. Now, if it was only easier to put my left shoe on I would feel like I was in my early thirties again.
We are closing in to the finish with a narrow lead and about 300 miles to the finish. When the game kicks it up a notch or four and starts throwing everything it has at us. In the darkness of night, these low altitude clouds called squalls start attacking you making the wind jump from the low teens into the thirty’s within a few seconds then dumping buckets of rain on you just to make it that much easier to see and raise the intensity level on the boat. These squalls appear to be dark bowling balls rumbling down the lane behind you to knock you over like a pin. Believe it or not, this is fun to us, to be that last pin standing and extend or gain back the lead in the race.
Two good nights of fighting the squalls and noticing that your competition is gaining on you make you dig deeper. Now there is one small bit of water before you that will challenge you, that bit of ocean is referred to the Molokai Channel. The wind increases to the low 30’s the sea state is most challenging with the waves suddenly increasing in size as they bounce off the different islands around you. If you have ever seen the Wedge break it’s like that. You are setting up for a nice wave then all of a sudden it is three times the size. If that’s not enough add in the commercial boat traffic and having to contact them on the VHF radio to make sure they see you and cross safely in front or behind you. OK, I got this, then 5 miles out, if you are fortunate, you are finishing during the daylight and the photography helicopters show up. One can get a little distracted yet needs to be alert not to get hit by a big blast of wind between CoCo Head and Diamond Head called a Williwaw. Yes, the Hawaiians have a name for this sudden burst of wind. Now you just have to bring the boat past the red channel buoy, red right returning, at the Diamond Head Light House and it’s all Mai Tai’s from there.
Already looking forward to the next version of this game.
Sea ya
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