TranspacBlogII-15: We Lose the First Round.

It has been said of this ocean race that it is really three races: the beginning is the race to get to the corner of the great high pressure zone. The middle part is just sailing down-wind in the trades, choosing jibe angles, and making clean jibes. The end is dealing with the intensified trade winds during the last day.

I think of it as a prize fight. We've fought three of 15 rounds, we won the round to Catalina, but Far Far has beaten us pretty clearly since then. We had Far Far in our sites yesterday, but since then, she has hidden just a bit beyond the horizon, a whopping 12 miles ahead of us according to this morning's report.

How the hell did they do that? Well last night, as you may have predicted from the last blog, was a frustrating series of 30-60 min 8 knot breezes from various directions, interspersed with utter calms of the same duration. No 360's (see last blog), but almost.

We have a crew of amazing sailors, each of whom loves the challenge of figuring out how to make a boat go faster. But right now, there isn't much to do. Right now, we are reaching with the wind over our starboard beam at around 5-7 knots , the big jib pulling very well. When the wind drops into the 2 knot range, we set the drifter. Then if it comes up again over 7 knots we change back to the big jib (called a genoa). These sail changes are relatively routine.

Far Far seems to be doing this all better than we. Our favorite alternate hypothesis is that she has a "light-weight genoa", very like ours, but half the thickness, making it ideal for the 0-8 knot breezes we have been having. This hypothesis posits that it isn't her crew-work, or helmsmanship, but her equipment, that gives her the edge. We thought, like last race, that we might have snagged a piece of the numerous sea-weed patties floating all over the place. Also, like last race, we threw Steve Calhoun, the captain of Psyche over to inspect the keel. It wasn't nearly as dramatic as last year, because even with all the sails pulling we were making just under 2 knots of breeze. So we slowed her down. Steve jumped and looked, and we hauled him aboard. We all hoped he'd have found a piece of kelp, because then we'd have an excuse. Like last year, he didn't, so it looks like we just have to sail harder.

The other Cal-40,California Girl, is behind both of us, but well within striking distance.

The main topic of conversation, on Psyche, is our global strategy. Some of you may have noticed on the web that we, as well as most of our competitors, are not sailing toward Hawaii, but rather toward New Zealand, i.e., well to the left of the shortest course to Honolulu. We are actually not all that far off the coast of Mexico! Why are we all doing this?

I'll tell you tomorrow.