2010 Pacific Cup Wrap Up

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I just want to take a minute to wrap-up our race to Hawaii. I’m a bit overdue in getting this together, but i got a bit busy bringing the boat back home too!

The 2010 Pacific Cup was a fantastic event. Our team of five sailors from around the country and four coaches aboard our new turboed Santa Cruz 50 Hula Girl was a perfect recipe for a memorable race. And what a race we had… with an elapsed time of 8 days and 19 hours, we were the 4th boat to sail into Kaneohe Bay, and corrected out to 3rd in class, and 6th overall (out of 50+ boats!). Not bad for our first outing, eh? Not only did we we end up with a great result, we ended up having a great time. Many thanks to the 2010 Hula Girl Team for making it a memorable event.

Here’s some photos for y’all (more coming too):

The J World Team in front of The Waterfront Hotel at Jack London Square, the title sponsor for Hula GirlOrganizing the sail stack…

Out the Gate… next stop, Hawaii!

Hmmm… looking kinda cold… must still be close to San FranciscoRippin’ along with the Blast Reacher and Genoa Staysail up

Barry getting comfortable in the nav station, playing Tetris. Just kidding. Actually working out our routing with Expedition, the most powerful navigation and flexible software package available for yacht racing… don’t leave port without it. (Good little plug for our sponsor, eh?)

Working hard to give the Hula Girl what she needs… more speed!

… and we rush headlong into the night…

Yea! Spinnaker up!

Double yea! Blue Skies!

Now this is more like a Pacific Cup!

Hey! There will be none of that ‘napping’ going on… this is a serious race!

Look at our pet ‘deck ape’ go!

Whoa! Port tack… finally!

A little too comfortable trimming the kite (note to self: get bean bag!)

Our trusty navigator, hard at work, takes a bearing with the compass…. whoops, I mean trims his beard with his sunglasses… I think… not really sure what is going on here.

Soaked by early morning squalls, but happy to be in Hawaii

The reception in Kaneohe is always great!

Ooohhh! Sweet nectar of the gods!

After.

Many thanks to coaches Barry, Kevin, and Geoff, and crew Bob, Mark, Rick, Tom and Vern! Fantastic job, and it was a pleasure to sail with all of you!We also want to thank the sponsors who help us run these great events: our primary sponsors of the Waterfront Hotel and Miss Pearl’s Jam House have been wonderfully supportive. Stop by for a room with a view of the water (and Hula Girl) or for some Gumbo on the patio…

And additional thanks go out to our team suppliers: West Marine for the crew gear, Expedition for the navigation and routing software, Spinlock for the Deckvest Series life jackets and safety harnesses, and McLube for all things slippery. Gracias, amigos!

I’m happy to report that Hula Girl is back in SF and getting ready for her season in Mexico… the next race will be the 2011 Newport to Cabo race… any takers?

All the best,

Wayne Zittel

2010 Hawaii To San Francisco Cruise Wrap-Up

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In late July, Hula Girl departed Oahu for California with a crew of offshore cruising students and yours truly as skipper. With a strange year for the return weather, we ended up sailing almost all the way… we motored for something like six hours thru the very bottom corner of the Pacific High, but that was about it. We cranked off the miles, and got back to CA in about 13 days.

We had a truly fantastic group aboard the boat, and it was an absolute pleasure to get to sail with each and every one of them. Everyone did a great job, and made it easy on me… they sailed the boat over 2000 miles (I think the autopilot was on for only three hours when motoring!) and should be proud proud of what they accomplished.

The good times are too many to mention, but we expect an upcoming cinematic release to document the journey (right Jorge?)… I will take pause to mention this highlight: Jon and Madeline getting married as we sailed in under the Golden Gate bridge after 2000 miles at sea! Very cool….

Anyway, I’m not sure what else to add… I could literally write for days describing the nights at sea, the sensation of the Hula Girl cutting thru the ocean, the camaraderie of the crew, and so on…. but I’ll spare you all my ramblings and share some photos:

Hula Girl in Hawaii
Leaving the Islands

Joe In Command

Double Rainbow Mid Pacific…

Madeline at the helm… and making a fashion statement!

Crew polishing off dinner, enjoying the last bit of another sunset…

Jorge making it look easy… hey, is that a squall out there??

A full rainbow! With a double! You don’t get ’em like this at home…

Barry keeping watch.

The night shift.

Life on board, at an angle…

The Honeymoon Suite. The Ritz it ain’t, but the the view is a solid ten stars.

Coming to the aid and transferring a battery to our friends on Deception, 1000 miles from the nearest speck of dry land.

Jon and Madeline… the happy couple…. awwwww….

A brief pause in the calm of the Pacific High… enjoying the view from aloft and swimming in 15,000 feet of clear, clear water…

The view from below

Sunrise

Hula Girl heads for the barn.

Many thanks to Joe, Barry, Jorge, Jon, and Madeline for a great trip…

All the best,

Wayne Zittel for the Hula Girl crew

 

Hula Girl’s Notebook Computer R.I.P.

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Hi all,

Barry here… Hula Girl’s Notebook PC took a dive off the navigation table last night, so no more emails to/from the boat. Sorry.
The team will have to navigate to SF the old fashioned way: using one of the two GPS/Chartplotters. LOL!
(but they do have charts and a sextant aboard – and numerous handheld GPSs).
I spoke via sat phone to Wayne and at 14:22 PDT, they were at 38 57N by 131 07W, averaging a course of 82 deg at an avg speed over ground of 9.2 knots. They were 404 miles west of the San Francisco approach buoy, a.k.a. “the Lightship.” They could be at our dock Sunday morning, but I suspect more likely between 2-4 PM.
They will broadcast more frequent position reports via their SPOT messaging device as they near they approach (thank you partner West Marine!)
We’ll have a little dockside welcome party for them, logistics permitting! Let me know if you plan on meeting the Hula Girl and her crew at our dock or need additional information to do so.
(email bdemak at sailing-jworld.com)
Hang Loose, Hula Girl!
Barry

Livin’ the High Life…

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Well, for a bit there, it looked like we would miss the whole Pacific High on our way to San Francisco from Hawaii. It looked like we were just going to scoot under it without ever getting to the calm waters typical of the center, but last night around 2am the high grew a bit, just enough to include us in it’s personal party. Being night and all when the wind dropped, we fired up the motor and continued on our merry way. Thru the morning watches, we didn’t see much more than about 4 knots of breeze. Very calm waters, and nice clear skies.

So there we were, motoring along when suddenly the engine quit. Just like that. Hmmm… not good, I am thinking. My first fear was that we had caught some trash, some scrap of a fishing net, that was drifting here in the high (we all know about all the trash out here… amazing/depressing how much we see in the middle of nowhere). I jumped down below and opened the engine compartment… I was relieved to find that I could spin the prop shaft by hand (meaning that it wasn’t fouled), but then perplexed as to what the problem might be. Well, a quick look at the Racor fuel filter revealed a fair amount of gunk in the fuel. So off came the filter, replaced with a spare and away we go, right? Not so fast… the fuel system isn’t priming… we can’t get the fuel system bled. Finally, after pulling apart the lines to the tank and clearing them, we get the engine running again. And we were off. For 15 minutes.

Yep, motor died again. Looked at the Racor again. Filled with junk again. So we have basically had to write off our whole fuel tank as contaminated… too bad, since that’s where about half of our fuel happens to be! But we have about 40 gallons in jerry cans, and we have rigged the engine to run from these, so we are good to go for the time being. And given the weather outlook, far more than we’ll need to get the Hula Girl and her crew back to the barn.

Once we had the engine sorted, we took a bit of time to enjoy where we were. A couple of rides up the mast yielded some very cool pictures. And the swimming was phenomenal. Diving into a pool 16,321 feet deep (well, hat’s what the chart says… we didn;t verify it) of crystal clear water (where you can see something like 5 miles down!) is a bit intimidating when you think about it… especially when you consider that anything 5 miles down can see you too!) So we didn;t think about it and just enjoyed the swim and showers. After our break, we were off again. We motored for another couple hours, but then started to stick our nose out the eastern side of the high (as expected), and we were off sailing again!

And so starts to final leg of our trip. It’s forecast to be a light reach, then building into a windy reach. Then maybe getting light again as we near the coast. But we’ll see. As we learned (again) toady, nothing is for certain.

A hearty dinner (build-your-own-burrito-bar) was had by all. Jorge and Madeline are on watch right now, and the rest of the crew are getting a bit of rack time and preparing for the cooler night watches up in this part of the ocean. Good times. And a beautiful day. The little issues were good challenges to overcome, and great learning experiences.

Now may turn to hit the rack. You all have a great evening, and we’ll check in again soon.

All the best,

Wayne Zittel and the Hula Girl Crew

Our Spot tracker page is: http://tinyurl.com/hulagirl

Contrary to what everyone says….

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Contrary to what everyone says… we really are nice guys. A couple of days ago we got word that another Santa Cruz 50 heading home from Hawaii had a problem with their batteries and weren’t able to start their engine… which meant no more power aboard. They had backup navigation systems and communication (a charged Sat phone and handheld VHF’s) and were rolling along fine (even landing some good fish, I hear), so it wasn’t an emergency by any stretch, but with a week still to go, it’s nice to have power. There is an informal radio net on the way back to CA, and a number of boats (Green Buffalo, Jamani, Rhum Boggie, among others) were pretty close and offered help, but we were a bit closer and sailing on the same line (they left a day before us), so all they had to do was slow down and wait for us.

Well, after a couple of emails with the owner and a couple of calls with the crew, we arranged a rendezvous… literally 1000 miles from anywhere! We removed one of our house batteries, lashed it into a canvas bag we use for gear, and hung the package off the end of our boom. They sailed under main only on an upwind course and we maneuvered under power carefully, coming in to weather from behind, so that our boom would hang over their aft quarter. Jasper aboard Deception did a great job snagging the heavy battery, with the comment, “It was like trying to catch a cannonball!”

Well, 15 minutes later they were all powered up and on their way.

We are almost halfway home at this point, and getting pretty close to the Pacific High, but still carrying great breeze (more now than we had in the Trades!). Looks like we’ll just graze the bottom of the high (instead of the typical route up and over or thru it), and have pretty good winds all the way in. In fact, there are a lot of boats out here with a lot of extra fuel this year. Such a surplus, in fact, that the good natured bidding started on the radio net at $1 per gallon, and seemed destined to fall from there! As early as tomorrow afternoon we’ll actually tack over to port tack (after about 1100 miles on starboard!) and point our bow at the Golden Gate.

Jon and Madeline made a great pasta lunch, while our on board cinematographer-in-training Jorge continues to capture everything that moves (and many things that don’t) on film. I think his production has already easily exceeded a feature, and in now somewhere in the realm of a Ken Burns epic…

We’ll keep you all posted on progress!

All the best,

Wayne Zittel and the Hula Girl Crew

Our Spot tracker page is: http://tinyurl.com/hulagirl

It’s a keeper!

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So action this morning right after dawn…

The call came from the cockpit that a glass fishing ball float (the ones that were historically used by Japanese fishermen to keep their nets afloat) was spotted. The timing could have been better (we has a squall bearing down on us), but we soon had the trophy aboard… and it was a big one… beach-ball sized, made of hand-blown lightly tinted glass, and home to a couple mussels and crabs (sorry guys!). Who knows how many years and decades these things have been floating out here?

Anyway, our charge north continues. We are about 600 miles from Hawaii as I write this at about 2am on the last Friday of July. The going has been pretty mild… some boats have been complaining about too little wind (we have seen lots in the 10 knot range), but the Hula Girl loves this stuff, trucking along at 8 knots in 10 knots of breeze.

We had a problem with the Single Sideband Radio yesterday. In fact, it hasn’t seemed to be as clear as it should be, and has acted erratically a couple of times. Two days ago, we couldn’t check in with the net of boats sailing from Hawaii to CA. Then the unit just clicked off, and stayed off. Well, after digging around a lot, it seems the the culprit was a loose wire in the new distribution panel yours truly installed in CA. Whoops. A quick fix, and we were loud and clear, “5 by 5” at this evening’s position report!

ANyway, that’s about all the exciting news (and boring details) from out here in the middle of the night, in the middle of the Pacific. The Moon is up. It’s quiet and aboard, with most sleeping. Barry is on watch with Madeline driving. 10 knots of wind from 080 and we are scooting across a glittery surface at 8.2 knots, heading 030… northward bound. I love this stuff.

Talk to you all soon… right now, I’m going to grab my iPod and park it in the cockpit for a while…

Wayne Zittel and the Hula Girl crew…

Our Spot tracker page is: http://tinyurl.com/hulagirl

Homeward Bound (… and I can get used to this)

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Ok,Ok… I know I still need to get to writing the post race skipper’s wrap-up for the 2010 Pacific Cup… but it was a busy week. First off, there were all the great post race events in a wonderful tropical setting… a big distraction from the necessary projects of getting the boat cleaned up, and then ready for the return trip… yep, there is more sailing yet to be done!

On Monday, five students for our annual offshore cruise from Hawaii to San Francisco left Kaneohe a touch after first light. The going has been mild, but more or less as expected: we have bent tight reaching north and eastward, heading toward the Pacific High. It was a bit lumpy when we left the islands, but has really calmed down… almost too much so! Right now we have only about 8 to 9 knots breeze, but I am happy that we are in a good quick boat… we are clipping right along at 7 knots.

So this cruising thing… let me tell you, I can get used to this! Say goodbye to the freeze dried meals: dinner this evening was smoked ahi, with shitake mushrooms, filed tomatoes, red onion, and smoked ahi over pasta,with an apple/avocado salsa garnish. Seriously. Served in the cockpit right at sunset. And we were Still sitting around rubbing our bellies when this eerie glow on the horizon grabbed our attention… and we had the ensuing Moonrise Over The Pacific for desert. That racing stuff might be over-rated! but then we still have some 1800 miles to go, and we aren’t hooking up any spinnakers in the foreseeable future…

Anyway, just wanted to let you all know that we are still out here, with the Hula Girl bringing us home. We’ll keep you all posted (it’s also a bit of a interesting year for the return, as the Pacific High isn’t doing what the Pacific High normally does). Our Spot tracker page is: http://tinyurl.com/hulagirl, but I’m not 100% sure it’s working out here. For anyone keeping score at home, right now (about 0300 Pacific Time the morning of August 28) we are at 24 49 N by 155 36 W, heading of 030M at about 7 knots.

Cheers all, have a nice slumber and we’ll catch you in the morn…

Wayne Zittel and the Hula Girl crew.

Uh oh.

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Our plan was working…Until it wasn’t. 165 miles to go… We’ll know tomorrow how we did. Enjoying the ride for now on this fast, fun but sweaty, hot and stinky boat. (as opposed to the wet, cold stinky boat it was just a few days ago)

Doesn’t appear that our lot is increasing during this port tack drag race to the finish. More headers than we’d like to see. Hoping to claw back the hour or so lead Deception gained yesterday, but expect it to be challenging. No matter the outcome tomorrow, this is an AMAZING charge to the finish.

If you don’t like this, you don’t like offshore sailing.

All good aboard “The Girl.”

Apologies for a pretty lame blog. Nobody stepped up to take editorial responsibilities away from me. The coaches have been busy with regard to our watch schedule, driving, navigation and the more mundane shipboard duties of housekeeping, sail repair, kite packing, food prep, dishes, etc.

The J/World customer participants on our team have settled in and stepped up in all areas, from spinnaker peels, banding and packing, trimming and grinding, hanging on while the boat slides sideways after a sheet (the “Sully”) gets fouled during a 30 knot “puff” from a squall, filling drink bottles with various color and flavoring substances, indulging in a endless potpourri of snack fud, determining the most appropriate hot sauce of the three for specific freeze dried meals, (Cholula on most, but definitely Tabasco on the Polynesian Chicken), crafting various nicknames for Kevin (a.k.a. Sully, Deck Ape, Looney Tunes, Bow Monkey, Monkey Boy, Curious George, Curious Jorge, Jorge Curioso, JC, and Boots, so far.) – even driving this great boat!

Wish us luck on our final 165!

Thanks to all who have supported us in this effort: J/World Partners, and the spouses and significant others of all aboard. We appreciate this great opportunity.

Aloha!

Barry, Wayne, Geoff, Kevin, Mark, Tom, Rick, Vern, Bob

Official race tracker is: http://www.ionearth.com/2010/pacific-cup/
Our Spot tracker page is: http://tinyurl.com/hulagirl

A Nice Day…

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Not too much to report from Day 7… 18:30 PDT.

A nice roll call of course, and a close dual for second shaping up. We’re very pleased to be in the hunt for a top spot. Our Ti leaves are drying out, and need to get home asap! 610 NM to go.

(plus the level of slap happy and inappropriate humor is on an uptrend)

All of the “fresh” food was finally disposed of today. Any meat implying a need for refrigeration was discarded. Still, no shortage of food aboard!

Fresh squeezed lemonade was served out of Mt. Gay Rum cups this afternoon, refreshing for all, but disappointing to most!

(apologies to Mike Priest for inappropriate use of the sacred logo cups!)

Winds on the lower side – happy with our reachy course so far… 13-15 knots most of the day. Can’t imagine it’s better for those more south of us.

Only time will tell. Geesh – 2 minutes between us and Deception. Glad they’ve sorted out their water ingress issues at their rudder bearing, so we won’t feel bad trying so hard to beat them!

To M.L. “Happy Cow!”

Cheers to all,

Barry and the Hula Girl Guys (this would be a very bad name for a band)

Official race tracker is: http://www.ionearth.com/2010/pacific-cup/
Our Spot tracker page is: http://tinyurl.com/hulagirl

Navigation

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2010 Pac Cup, Pro Forma Summary.

Start on Starboard, Tack to Port ASAP
Port board to Mile Rocks layline, Tack
Sail approximately 1220 nautical, Gybe onto Port
Sail to Finish

Truth be told, we put in two extra tacks before Pt. Bonita to stay in touch with our Division…
And, 823.6 miles out, who really knows what lies ahead. But, at present it looks like you could have sailed this Fun Race to Hawaii tacking twice and gybing once.

So, today’s first big fun was…
SHOWERS!!!

All needed them, but not all took them. (ick)
We have a fresh water nozzle at the stern, so there are few acceptable excuses.
Stronger suggestion may be required tomorrow!

Next big fun was the gybe. Everyone was experiencing the strange phenomenon whereas it seems one leg is decisively shorter than the other, so we decided to gybe and start sailing towards Hawaii. The left leg will have a chance to rest, now.

We had a chafed sheet that needed to be changed, so Sully got to leave the boat for a bit of fun. Once we sorted out the choreography in the relatively tiny cockpit, it went pretty smoothly. But, after the gybe, we noticed a small tear in the kite. We did a pretty quick baldheaded drop, fix, band, bag and relaunch. So much for that freshly showered feeling. In the end, we figured this was better (and probably a whole lot less to botch) than two peels.

Chile Mac with Beans was a big hit for dinner. Hopefully no significant downside to that…

We’ve put a lot of faith in NOAA’s 96 hr surface forcasts… Hoping our routing keeps us in fresh breeze, where others may stumble into some light stuff. Fingers crossed.

(and if anyone from Horizon is reading this, I may or may not be bluffing)

822 to go!

Official race tracker is: http://www.ionearth.com/2010/pacific-cup/
Our Spot tracker page is: http://tinyurl.com/hulagirl