Nathalie Criou on the Express 27 Elise files this report on the just-completed LongPac:

I had never done the LongPac and it is a really interesting race tactically since there isn't a 'mark' to reach, but a line to cross, hence a multiplicity of 'marks'. I took Heather Bowers with me (a chicks' boat!) who is not very experienced with ocean racing, to give her an opportunity to enjoy the vast beauty of the ocean. Well, she had plenty of time to enjoy it!

We started on a cold and drizzly morning out the Gate, in moderate winds. As soon as we turned the corner at Bonita Point, the wind reached what I thought was going to be the low of the race (you will see later on that I was very, very wrong). By the time we reached Point Reyes (with a bunch of other boats including the Express 27 Taz!! and the Moore 24 Bar-Ba-Loot), the wind speed had dropped to 1.1 knots. We had planned a dinner for rough upwind (nothing to prepare and no need to go below), and we had time to cook a really nice carrot soup, potatoes, etc., as we were going nowhere.

As soon as I got off watch in the evening, I heard two loud bangs. I thought, “How can Heather manage to bump into something in the middle of nowhere?” No call-out from Heather, so I figured that it was a minor thing. When I came up on deck, I found out that we had been attacked by a vicious sea lion which rammed the boat twice. It probably hit the keel the first time round (definitely felt close to the quarterberth where I was sleeping) and the rudder the second time. I have yet to take the boat out of the water to check if there is any damage. Elise is very light so I don't think it's a big issue. What's with all these sea mammals ramming into the boats I sail on??????

The winds picked up (9-15 knots) which was great as we were able to bear away to avoid two whales (including one with a baby whale in its wake). The second one (mother with kid) were literally passing one boat length away from us. We could have touched it with the boat hook! Probably greys or humpbacks. So magical! We stayed with our #1 as our course wasn't a close haul, just a regular beat, and that sail worked just fine on a heavily loaded boat.

The wind then dropped...to zero. Nada. Nil. Zippo. We bubbled around for many many many hours, watching out for ships and getting ready to deploy the engine if we had to get out of their way in a hurry. One night as we were becalmed yet again, both Heather and I heard very distinctly a whale breathe nearby. Probably asleep as we were going nowhere and it kept breathing for four hours right next to us.

We stood around in the sun, in the fog, in the rain. I think that I was particularly unlucky with watches. I would hear Heather tell me, “The stars were SO beautiful” - we had plenty of time to count them - and then I'd come on deck to find rain.

I’m not sure how localized these 'wind holes' were, but a couple of times we saw boats sailing in the opposite direction with a full spinnaker, when we had 0.2 knots of wind, probably caused by the flapping of the sails. The positive side of this is that we got to practice very light air sailing. You have no idea how fast we can sail an Express 27 in 0.4 knots of wind. We are going to just kick ass during the midwinters. Plus we got in some really really good meals. Lasagnas, etc. - plenty of time to cook! We did a couple of projects on the boat since we also had plenty of time for that. And the inevitable happened. Put two women together and they'll chat, and chat, and chat.

The other thing that I had been meaning to practice was upwind driving. Well, I got plenty of that. We had to beat all the way to the line as we went for shortest distance (due west which ended up being SW in reality given the wind direction). The wind shifted and started to come from behind minutes before the turnaround point for us. I remember thinking, “Cool we can set the kite!” then immediately, “Wait, not cool, we are turning around!”

Lo and behold, we had to beat back most of the way, TACKING our way back to San Francisco over a hundred miles! Very technical there too with wind shifting both in velocity and direction so so so often, with some random 30-degree shifts all over the place. Really super super technical sailing. We ran into fog banks (trying to tack and follow the contours to get extra wind, until the course didn't make any sense at all. We tacked several times on wind shifts to avoid making any headway back to the longitude line! No sail change (after we changed to the #1 back in Point Reyes), never enough wind for anything smaller.

We saw lightning. We saw a shark fin that didn't look very healthy (and Heather said that we probably saw 'Stumpy', right by the Farallones. We had sea birds flying around all the time.

We sailed close to Taz!! and Bar-ba-loot for the last couple of days. Then there was the 'Battle of the Farallones' with Taz. We first put a comfortable distance between Taz!! and Elise (mainly Heather's doing, working the swell in our favor), but the wind shifted west right by the Farallones and favored Taz’s course. So he smoked us about 10 miles before reaching the islands. He was also able to fly the kite and we ended up in a small, concentrated no wind area (!$)^&@$%&P)%*&$%& and I was being polite!) 

We then made a tactical choice to sail up to the north side of the islands, keeping really hot angles (avoiding like the Plague any calm areas on the water). Taz!! went through the other side and suffered from being in the lee of the islands, plus having to steer a much hotter angle back to the Gate (he dropped his kite). We could keep the kite up all the way to the finish. We had a real blast in finally some decent wind (9-16 knots) reaching more or less hard to the Gate. Around Bonita Point, we met Bar-Ba-Loot and match-raced to the finish. We were pretty bow to bow until the last jibe, right past the Gate (at the Gate, it was blowing 17-25 knots), as we had to deal with a minor spinnaker wrap and lost a few seconds there. We floated the spinnaker all the way to the finish, right by Bar-ba-loot’s stern.

As always, I feel so privileged to be able to experience the beauty of the mighty Pacific on such a regular basis. Oh, and remember that Magellan called this ocean 'Pacific' because it was so calm - well, this year's LongPac certainly confirmed that!

- Nathalie Criou

For more on the LongPac, see LongPac Progress Report and LongPac Wrapup. For Nat’s photos plus video, see http://beatsarcoma.smugmug.com/gallery/9165760_aFiQF#611521683_N6jb8