So on the wee morning hours on Wednesday, still some 900 miles from Hawaii, a mishap in the darkness led us to rip our last big chute. Big rip. Basically blew two long tears along two of the three edges. Ouch. We pulled out each of the damaged sails, and determined that none of them could be fixed with any degree of certainty. So off we went with a smaller, heavier kite, and we set out looking for squalls and the stronger winds they bring! We managed to hook into a couple of fun ones, seeing winds to almost 30 knots, and the hunt continues. It;s a bit more difficult at night to see them coming and line ourselves up with them, but we are managing ok. Also, we are deeper in the trade winds so the breezes are a bit stronger in general, and the team has taken too racing this like a leg (a LONG leg!) of a buoy race: we are watching each shift and gybing as much as necessary to always keep on the favored gybe. We think this aggressive sailing is going to be the only way we can keep up with the rest of our fleet, and even so it’s going to be a tough battle. It will be interesting to see in this mornings roll call how we have managed. Even just sticking with the other boats will be quite an accomplishment.

Anyhow, the sailing is spectacular now. Right around midnight each evening, a big moon rises in our wake. Throughout the evening it works its way ever higher into the sky, lighting up the sea and the tropical cloud formations. Ron’s driving at the moment (graveyard shift, 4:30am), with Tanya on trim. We have a little over 15 knots, and are running along at around 8 knots… I’m down below, just having pulled down weather, doing a bit of nav-a-guessing, and occasionally sticking my head out the companionway to remind them to “bear away… stop going so fast/high! Hawaii is over THERE!” Seems like the eternal job of a navigator. We’ve had only a couple of squid and flying fish come aboard as unfortunate hitchhikers. Today we were accompanied a couple of times by big schools of large fish, guessing tuna. Pretty cool. And the company aboard is great. Since we have a chemist, a couple of doctors, and other various participants much smarter than ourselves, the big discussion today revolved around the possibility of developing dehydrated beer. Despite being told it’s impossible, John remains hopeful that breakthroughs will someday make it possible. A boy can dream, no?

Anyway, we’ll give an update once we hear the morning position reports… keeping our fingers crossed that we have been able to keep in touch with the fleet!

All the best,

Wayne Zittel & the J World Team

As we tick off the miles towards Hawaii and shed the layers of foul weather gear, the team is really getting stronger. I knew from the outset that our performance in the event would largely depend on downwind driving. It’s pretty tough to get good at offshore downwind driving except by doing it, and the group here has been racking up the experience, and it shows.

The toughest thing so far has actually been the nighttime cloud cover. We have a nice full moon, but it isn’t able to get thru the thick clouds, so the evenings are extremely dark. Driving with the spin up in total darkness has forced us to drop the kite one evening, and last night we had our first casualty we blew up a a chute at about 11PM. It’s way too early in the race to be losing sails, and I don’t think I have enough tape and thread to get this one back together! So we learn from our mistakes and go on.

(ed. note: J/World’s offshore racing programs enable participants to participate fully in the experience. All are expected to drive their fair share. While most are not experienced downwind drivers at the start of the race, they are by the time they get to Hawaii!)

We’ll have to throttle back a bit more in the evenings, but it’s better than taking ourselves out of the race. And right now it looks like the conditions might actually cooperate, keeping things in the sub 15 knot range while our gang gains experience and we look for moonbeams to guide us!

So with the mishaps, we have give up some tough miles to a couple of boats in our fleet. Sleeping Dragon, the Hobie 33 sailed by a couple of our good friends, has just launched out in front. Right there with them are the two Synergy 1000s. We have all pushed south, expecting the Pacific High to move towards us over this weekend and early next week, lightening the breezes along the shorter, northern Great Circle route. Paul Cayard passed us slightly to the north this morning, so we are in good company. We are hoping that as the winds lighten a bit, some of the smaller/lighter surf machines might stick to the water a bit more, and we can put out waterline to work for us and maybe reel in some miles on our class leaders…

More later!

The J World Team

The question we are all asking is how are we going to find these tiny islands out here in the middle of this vast ocean?

The answer is that we turn on our stereo and have it scan the am and fm stations. When we start hearing ukulele music we know we are close and we should start looking.

from your pal Don

[ed. note: this is NOT how they find Hawaii! They can use a nautical chart and know their position from the ship’s GPS or the two backup handhelds. They can also determine position using celestial navigation. What they really do, however, is used extremely advanced technology made possible by Nick White called “Expedition.” This tactical and navigation software is used by Americas Cup and Volvo Ocean Teams. Special thanks to Nick White for making it possible for J/World to introduce this technology to our participants. See iexpedition.org for more details.]

Well, as the morning arrives on this third day of the Pacific Cup, we are starting to feel the joy. But it wasn’t always like this. Wednesday afternoon, shortly after 2pm, team J World charged across the starting line in front of the St. Francis Yacht Club. A good starboard end start and an early tack out into the building flood had us leading our fleet under the Golden Gate into a 20+ knot westerly.
Once outside, we changed up to the #1 job expecting it to lighten a bit. The breeze backed off a bit, but by the time we were at the Farallones it had come on again, but it has also shifted around to the north a bit, so we eased the sheets, pressed the bow down, and said goodbye to (not so) sunny California.

By evening, the winds had built a bit, and the seas were quite lumpy. We throttled back and changed back to the #3, and rolled into the first night. Confused seas and some unrelenting breezes made it a tough night, and day two saw similar conditions until the later afternoon. But then, as if on cue, the wind eased down below the 20 knot mark, and began veering, so with sheets eased we charged into the second night with a much more comfortable situation.

At this morning’s radio check in, we discovered that a couple of our fleet are close by, but we still haven’t bee able to spot them. But they are too close for our liking, so with the wind getting farther behind is, we were able to get the spinnaker up, and now we are surfing along under mostly cloudy skies at about 8-12 knots. Yes indeed.

So that’s the immediate update. I think some of the team here will be adding their two cents worth in a bit too…

Aloha,

Wayne