Newport to Cabo Race, Day 2

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Subject: Newport to Cabo Race, Day 2
Dia Dos!

Life is good onboard the Hula Girl.  We are charging south, trying to
outrun an approaching cold front, and things are looking reasonably
good…  for now.  After a gorgeous evening with a nearly full moon
lighting up the night sky, and schools of dolphin making a mockery of
our boatspeed, dawn broke and the wind had shifted to the North a bit
lifting us, so we peeled to the A2 spinnaker.  When the wind went even
more north in the mid morning, we gybed onto the header and aimed
towards the shore.  Our weather shows that the breeze is going to get
light in the north and west of this part of the ocean, so we are
making a big effort to keep in the breeze.

In the afternoon, we  crossed tacks with the J/145 Bad Pak, just a couple of boatlengths between us!
Pretty cool for being 28 hours into the race!
We shortly gybed to run down the coast again, making sure to stay
offshore enough that we don’t get caught in the light stuff over there
too.  Yep, that’s right…  it’s looking light offshore, and light
inshore, so we are doing our best to thread the needle…  we know it
won’t last, however, and we expect the breeze to start dying on us and
shifting to the south late tonight and into tomorrow.

We just had a nice pasta dinner, and reorganized the sail stack,
making sure that the sails we expect to be needing tonight are
accessible.  It could be a bit of a hectic evening, but I think most
onboard are pretty well rested and looking forward to the challenge!
Everyone is doing an awesome job.  Bev is even studying off-watch….
now that’s commitment!

All right, that’s about all I’ve got for now.  In closing, Chris just
quoted Thor Heyerdahl (sp?) “We caught sharks with our bare hands and
generally had a fine time.”

Wayne Zittel & the Hula Girl Crew

1 reply
  1. Barry
    Barry says:

    By now Wayne and the team are looking at the same weather data that I am. The track that they are on to Cedros should be about the best they can do.

    I received an email from a boat well to the West of Hula Girl that was already suffering lighter breeze.

    The Hula Girl has the right sails to work through the transition and keep speeds “up” at about 5 knots, though things could slow down even more according to the forecast between 2am and 7am or so.

    Based on their observations of the wind direction and velocity on the boat – they have better information than we do! (they can tell how valid and accurate the forecast data is)

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