TranspacBlogII-27D: WE WON!!

Last email (sent the day after, but you can read it for effect) found us with a big question mark.

Farfar racing along to save her time. We struggling not to let them do it.

Beautiful moonlit night. Smooth sea. Wind, 18-24 knots. High tension on board. To sail all this way and not be able to beat them, had us all dry mouthed. The focus of the last 6 hours of the race was downright unhealthy (in the long run).

We realized that what made us fast on that point of sail was the "trimmer", the person on the spinnaker sheet. Andrew and Charlie traded off. They know when to trim and how fast. They caught bunches and bunches of spinnaker collapses. Each collapse is probably worth 10 seconds; too many and we lose.

We Won.

We did it. We saved our time. 9 minutes (90 spinnaker collapses; 40 spinnaker changes; an hour on the wrong jibe), after more than two weeks of match racing.

I can't imagine any other set of opponents grappling for that long.

At the welcome party, we talked with the father/son pair (Mark and Peter English) of the four crew on Farfar. They were just as keyed up and stressed as we were. Bottom line is that we made each other's experience incredibly intense. Take away Farfar, and the race was a mellow slow passage. Add them back in, and we had the experience of a life time. I don't know if any of them or their friends read this blog, but I want to thank them for basically kicking our butts. We saved our time, but they beat us to the barn. But we still...

WON!

Such a crazy scene at the dock. The goofy Psyche crew and their loved ones. Surprises. Charlie's family showed up unannounced (they couldn't stay away). Tom Jorgensen and son Rob flew over just to see the scene. Press people wondering how we did it.

But here's the big thing. My sweet Bird came with layer upon layer of leis. I finally got to experience a little piece of those old black and white photos of my dad in Honolulu, after having won all the trophies and breaking the record in 1951. Leis up to my chin, as happy and relieved as ever could be.

I'll send one more blog tomorrow from our hotel.

Ta Da (Hawaiian for seeyalater)