Boat left the dock today around 4:30pm after a tremendous effort by the race crew to get her ready. She passed her inspection last week, we added the refrigerator hatch latch and the dust bin bungee that the inspector asked for, as well as a couple of barrel bolts to hold down the settee seats, and then Matt started loading on food. A whole year of boat prep, weeks of sailing, 2 years of planning, training, and finally we are headed to the Pacific Cup. With 2 carloads worth of food!
Sails are bricked, med kit inspected, dodger is on, SSB antenna checked, food is stowed, the boat is ready. So off she went. Nice send off from friends and family too!
Here is their first update, via SSB (this is very low bandwidth radio based email--so brevity is key):
All is good. Greetings from Al, Brendan, Somerset, Monear and Wes, we are currently motoring out past double bluff into about 8 knots from the nw but with 1 knot of current behind us. Cruising at 2600 RPM doing 6.3 through the water but 7.4 GPS. Trying 6 hours on and 9 off as a watch rotation with 2 on at any one time at least until we get out on the ocean. Having Quinoa Dish Delish with fresh albacore tuna for dinner and Lemon meringue pie for dessert. No it won't be like this the whole trip because of no refrigeration we are eating the fresh stuff first. Thanks to everyone on the race crew for the clean prepared boat for the five of us to at least start the trip. Al
If you need to get a message to the crew, their cell phones will work for another 12-24 hours, depending on how far offshore they get. After that, try texting, it tends to get through better when they do have a signal. Then try emailing us here at kotukusailing (at) gmail. com, and we will help you forward a message on via SSB radio. We will post every update we get here, so follow the blog, and you will have the most up-to-date reports at your fingertips.
Thanks for supporting our dreams!
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