LongPac Wraps Up

July 11, 2011

A most unusual LongPac officially finished this morning with the 0436 crossing of the Westsail 32 Tortuga sailed by Randy Leasure. The race was unusual because there were only four finishers out of 26 starters. Conditions proved to be frustratingly light or scarily rough depending on where you were on the course.

This race was originally set up to be the qualifier sail for the Singlehanded TransPac, and it still is a good shake down for a lot of the boats. Stephen Buckingham on the Black Soo Starbuck was still working on systems the night before the start. He started swapping non-working autopilots and related gear just before the race. "I wound up installing and/or testing a Raymarine ST4000, SG1 and an X5 and rudder sensor unit, etc. (I think), and some combination of compasses and drives. Whatever it was I wound up with was working great. My AIS is an old Smart Radio hooked up to an old Mac G4 Powerbook running Nav-X (Thanks Greg Nelsen!) I ran the audio into the stereo for a very loud alarm which worked great!" Stephen mentioned the alarm went off in time to avoid a ship bearing down on him, so it's nice technology even though it's hard to get working at times.

Proof that at least one autopilot on Starbuck was working. ©2011 Stephen Buckingham

Starbuck dropped out, but Stephen is contemplating a solo qualifier (aka LatePac), maybe in September.

Finishing at 1048 on Saturday, Bob Johnston's J/92 Ragtime! took line honors, and corrected out by 10 hours on the next finisher, David Morris's Wylie 31 Moonshadow, which crossed the line just before midnight on Saturday.

"I got the boat dried out," said Bob, "cleaned up and back on her trailer. She deserved a lot of pampering after taking such good care of her skipper out there. The big refit last year allowed me to rearrange a few things on deck and get everything working smoothly. It was also a confidence booster since I knew the 18 year-old rig was brought back to near-new condition

"I heard Stan Honey loud and clear when he said (at an SSS LongPac meeting in May) that you need to look at the COAMPS GRIB files, find the synoptic breeze, and fight your way to get there.

"Many in the fleet (including me) kept sailing up the Coast because that's where the breeze was. Problem was, those were diminishing returns when the goal was to get west. Just before dusk I said, 'Screw this, I'm going to 126° 40!'

"I've spent most of my 42 (sailing) years in dinghies, not keelboats. One thing I like about Ragtime! is you can sail her that way. She's light enough that weight placement still matters (but not so light that she can't take ocean conditions). She weighs about double what an Express 27 weighs for example. So I sat on the low side to keep the sails full, trimmed the 155 genoa carefully, and sailed through the night fog from breeze patch to breeze patch, steadily working west. The farther I got, the bigger the breeze patches were. By 0500 Thursday morning, the wind was in the low teens and I knew I'd made it through.

"Between 0600 and 0700 I changed the sail plan over to jib top and single reefed main. Within a couple hours the boat wanted a second reef, as the wind had reached the mid-twenties. Beam reaching in those conditions is broachy and hard on the autopilot, so the goal was to keep the sails' center of effort low and forward.

"With the forecast northerly, the fastest course was due west, so that's what we sailed. Seas were high and I saw wind into the low 30s. Fortunately I'd installed the dodger - it would have been tough without it as waves were breaking on the boat frequently. If one broke near the bow it would spin us around 30-40 degrees, until the autopilot could correct.

"I slept for up to 1-1/2 hours if things were stable (bad term - nothing was stable). All movements aboard the boat were tedious. Fortunately I installed more grab handles in the cabin recently so I never got launched into something hard.

"I reached 126° 40 at 0620 Friday morning, took the traditional photo of the GPS and turned around. The wind was still high but the sea state was better and a bit aft of the beam so much dryer - and the sun was shining out there! I had a nice ride back in on Friday and started looking at the Golden Gate currents. I would be coming in against an ebb in the early morning (light breeze). I assumed I'd want the Code Zero, but time would tell.

"The rhumb line would take me between North and Middle Farallon but I remembered from 2006's Singlehanded TransPac return how many logs and smaller flotsam were among the islands, and I wanted a hotter reach from there to the Gate, so I cracked off slightly to pass south of SE Farallon.

"I reached the Farallones at daybreak on Saturday with breeze in the low teens and farther aft than expected. (Normally you can't set until the Lightbucket.) So I readied the big runner and hoisted just past the islands. The breeze steadily lightened and the ebb became more pronounced, but of course the wind picked up again close to the Gate.

"I had no idea how many boats had dropped out or where I was vs. the fleet, until photographer Erik Simonson told me just before the finish."

Ragtime! finishes. The conditions at the start and finish don't tell the tale. ©2011 Danielle Machado

Rounding out the quartet of finishers was the Triton Darwind, sailed by Thomas Watson, coming in at 1547 on Sunday. He had wind all the way back. Although the race includes a doublehanded division, all four finishers were singlehanders.

The Trophy Meeting for the LongPac will be on Wednesday, July 20, at Oakland YC, beginning at 1930. Since only four boats finished, it will be a short awards ceremony, but many stories will be told and all SSS racers are encouraged to attend. The next SSS race is to Half Moon Bay on August 6. See www.sfbaysss.org for more info.