The Pacific lives up to its name.

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From the J World Radio News: The Pacific lives up to its name.

Yes indeed. Well, at least the part of the Pacific that is currently the venue for the 2009 Transpac race. There is a lot of activity many thousands of miles away, but that seems to have disrupted our little party way down here, much closer to the Equator. Team J World (and the rest of the fleet) have been working hard in some really trying conditions. Very, very light breezes have made going painfully slow. Every mile (in fact, every boatlength) seems to take a tremendous amount of focus and patience. There is encouraging news, though, as today we started moving along with a bit more breeze. And knowing that the weather patterns should be changing in the next 24 hours and that boats which made gains now should reap increasing rewards kept us working. It seems to be paying off. We have been holding a strong second place in our class, even taking over the lead for a day…

On board, there is a rumor sweeping the crew about a Sea Mall with an impressive food court. The EPIRB has been re-wired to become the “Emergency Pizza Indicating Radio Beacon,” designed to expedite pizza pie delivery to the remote aquatic regions. And thru it all, Bill just sits on the transom, staring back towards the mainland, continually muttering (occasionally hollering) something about Blueberries…

We have been seeing tons of these small jelly fish, no bigger than a pack of cards, with their little sails up (luckily, none have actually succeeded in going faster than we are!). If you look closely, odds are you’ll see some of the small white (albino??) crabs that scoot across the surface of the water. Not sure what they are doing out here, over 500 miles from the nearest patch of land, and in water some 60,000 feet deep! Occasionally, flying fish surprised by our presence (and probably our keel), take flight, arcing away from our bow, but other than that, it’s pretty lonely out here…

Other happenings: The raspberry crumble served up at 3am last night seems to have been a hit. Nothing like some tasty treats to take make the graveyard shifts a little more pleasant. We made a sacrifice of Rum to the wind gods today; it wasn’t much, but we are hoping to get credit for the fact that it was 100% of the rum aboard. Josh has been threatening to light all sorts of things on fire in honor of the holiday. Luckily his hurricane proof lighter seems to have run out of butane… can’t image how that would have happened…

Anyway, late at night now and I am taking the chance to catch up the latest weather faxes, and we are all cheered at the fact that the big spinnaker went up this afternoon, and we are able to fly it from puff to puff… and although the holes out here are still big, it’s looking like the worst is behind us. We are all looking forward to surfing in the tradewinds in the upcoming days…

More later, and happy Fourth of July from all of us out here at our quiet outpost at 20 25’N by 126 35’W…

Wayne Zittel and the J World Team

It was as if they were motoring!

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Well, I have certainly had easier sailboat races.

So not only is our destination halfway across the Pacific Ocean, and our route taking as far from dry land as you can get on mother earth, we are also being thrown some quite interesting weather. Usually by this time in the Transpac Race from LA to Hawaii, the spinnakers are coming out as the breezes freshen and get behind the boats, giving crews the thrilling surfing conditions in warm weather that contribute to making this event one of the all time classic yacht races.

Not so right now… After our last post, the breeze lightened up, and has been shifty and challenging for the past day. Last night, we were slatting away at about 1 knot for far too long. It was phenomenally frustrating to see the lights of a boat which had been about 5 miles astern all day, just take off like we were standing still (which we were), and they were motoring at full steam (which they can’t of course, since it’s a sailboat race). Demoralizing, to say the least. But much to our happiness at the morning position report, we learned that the mystery boat was in fact the Alaska Eagle, the escort boat and communications center for the fleet who reported that in the middle of the night they had, in fact, started motoring to keep on their schedule. Much relief aboard, followed by satisfaction when morning roll-call indicated that we had gained nicely on most of our fleet. One notable exception is the One-Design 35 in our class, Relentless, an ultralight which does not seem to be struggling as much as us heavier boats in the light winds… They are currently winning our class, with us in holding onto second.

So what to report of life onboard? The day was warm and mostly sunny. They layers of clothing are getting peeled back, but the nights are still a touch chilly, so the foulies haven’t gone too deep in the sea bags yet. We pulled out the sextant for a bit today and practiced taking sights. It was a bit bouncy (trust me, it’s surprisingly hard to get an accurate reading), and there’s a bit of room for improvement… let’s just say for now that if all our GPSs took a dive, we could probably see the islands before we sailed past them. Probably. Like I said, a bit of room for improvement, but that’s what we are here for. We cracked into the freeze dried rations this evening, with a dinner of Lasagne and vegetable medley. Not too shabby… We were accompanied by dolphins earlier this evening (I seem to have slept thru it). The moon rises an bit before dark, and the early evenings are glorious. It’s now late night (around 2:30am) and dark dark outside. Really puffy too, with breeze at 2 knots, then 12 knots… but at least we are still moving.

Yes, I have certainly had easier sailboat races. But not many more enjoyable.

All the best from Wayne and the J World team from out here in the wide blue Pacific. More later…

Day 3, already?

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So here we are, some 300 miles from our start off Point Fermin in LA, and really not that much has changed.

We started in a building breeze, working upwind in an effort to lay the West End of Catalina Island. We took a couple of hitches to make it around the point, changed down to the #2 jib, then cleared the island. The breeze softened to about 12 knots and we changed back to the #1 headsail, and headed off into the first night on a tight reach into some moderately confused seas.

And so it has been. The past two days we have seen 10 to 16 knots, all from pretty much the same westerly direction. That has put us on a tight starboard reach as we dive south. All the while, we are nervously watching the weather reports, which are predicting our first big speed-bump. There is an area of light and variable winds developing smack in our path. So most of our class is heading south to get around it as quickly as possible, but it will still take us a couple of days. And the big question is, how far south to go? The farther we go, the more wind, but the greater the distance… so we are all gambling a bit out here, watching the weather, trying to make our most informed choices… The good news is that we are currently sitting second in class, but the tough stuff is still to come.

As of a couple hours ago, we started to feel the softening breeze. Now we have about 6-8 knots of breeze, and clear skies over an incredibly blue ocean (I always seem to forget how blue it can be, and am so pleasantly surprised each time again). Back over our starboard aft quarter we can see one of our competitors. Based on our positions during our roll-call this morning, we are guessing that it is the One Design 35 Relentless. They are a quick boat and well sailed, so we need to keep some distance on them. The advantage is ours early in the race during this upwind work, but later, when the spinnakers come out and the surfing starts, they will start to take off on us… so good to keep them at bay for now…

So we just had lunch… Chef Josh treated us to his sandwich stylings. ‘Fast’ Lane Hill is driving, and we are poking along doing what we can to make time. Bill not seemingly content with the freeze dried raspberry crumble we promised him for desert tonight… keeps insisting on BLUEBERRY crumble… maybe the sun is getting to him already. Too bad. He seemed like a nice guy…

Anyway, that’s about it from out here.

Wayne Zittel & Team J World, signing off…