The Pacific Cup 2012 Wrap-Up with Hindsight Included

(Originally written in September.  Posted in November.)

Kotuku is back in her slip.  Summer has ended.  And a few folks asked me if I would do a quick summary of what we learned on our great adventure this summer, racing to Hawaii in the Pacific Cup.  Here is what I can dredge up from the memory banks.  Here are some highlights:

Pacific Cup, the Fun Race to Hawaii.
It is 2070 nautical miles.  And that is just the Race.  The delivery was another 750.  And the ride home?  3000?  All in Kotuku would travel nearly 6000 miles to San Francisco, to Kaneohe, on Oahu, and then home.  About 50 boats signed up from all kinds of places, including Victoria, Vancouver, Anacortes, Seattle,  Portland, and California.  2 Sloop boats, Sandpiper and Kotuku would make the journey.  Thanks to the hard work and fine sailing of her crew, Kotuku would arrive back in Seattle in good shape, and ready to race or cruise again in the fall.  And we would forge strong friendships and create lasting memories.  It would

The Fast Boats Get All the Glory.  Until They Don't.
The race itself was a slow go for the first starters, the doublehanders and slower classes.  Thanks to a healthy hit to our handicap, we were a "pretty fast" boat, and started later in the week.  After a solid start, Kotuku and crew beat out under the Golden Gate, saw 10 whales by the time we got past the Farallones, and got a kite up on Day 2.  Some of the boats who left three days in front of us were just leaving the Farallones themselves.

We had great reaching sails and we had great sailing.  True to form, the clouds began to leave us, the spin pole ground back slowly, and pretty soon we were running.  The fleet was large enough that we saw boats most days, and had a series of battles with other boats in the fleet.  We caught a tuna, and later a Mahi.  Neither fish lasted very long, because Matt is a fine chef.

The middle of the race was squally.  I remember describing it as "Launching off cliffs in pitch blackness, driving by feel, with both crew talking constantly about heading, wind direction, and speed."  It was seriously intense.  All 7 crew switched off, but when the chips were really down, Alex Simanis stepped up.  We had some pretty good drivers aboard, everybody having raced and driven offshore in breeze before, but Alex was amazing, driving for hours in the nastiest conditions.  Made for interesting sleeping when the boat was launching off waves with the water roaring off the stern, too.

It Takes An Army...
Getting the boat ready is a lot of work.  Our whole crew, led by Al Hughes, pitched in.  Here is a quick summary of what this looked liked.  It was truly a team effort, and I want to thank each and everybody for their commitment and hard work.

Matt Steverson owned the provisioning, and researched exhaustively how to get the maximum food value (and flavor!) with minimum weight.  We beta-tested concoctions on overnight races during Southern Straits, Swiftsure, and Oregon Offshore.  We carefully calculated required amounts for delivery to San Francisco, the Race, and the return leg to Seattle.  Matt hand-packed every ingredient for every meal, for every day the boat traveled on its great circle.  When we caught fish, Matt had them filleted, cubed, seasoned and added to the meal plan, almost before we had the blood cleaned off the boat.  We ate like royalty, cooking and clean-up were easy.  And we were all gloriously happy!

Emily Hawken took classes, researched offshore medical kits put together an extensive list of medical supplies from IV fluids to pain killers to catheters.  I have no doubt we had the best med kit in the fleet, but more importantly, Emily, a nurse practitioner put the meds and her knowledge to good use by providing remote support to both delivery crews who experienced some serious issues (multi-day sickness, dehydration, infection) and through her support the boat was able to carry on, although we thought of diverting on the way south, and also talked about options for getting a sick crewmember off the boat on the ride home.  Ironically, the race crew that Emily was a part of didn't have any issues more serious than rope burn and sunburn.  Thanks Emily!

Alex Simanis was our sailmaker, and built us an extremely fast downwind set of sails.  The A2 was our real weapon, and probably pulled the boat along for over 1000 miles.  It still looks great.  The S4?  Not only was it beautiful, it was extremely rugged.  In squalls I never once worried about the sail, bouncing cliff jumping off of big confused seas.  The sail just took what the sea had and pulled hard.  19.6 knots under storm grey skies.  No problem.  But Alex didn't just sell us sails.  He and the team at Ballard Sails painstakingly babied our old inventory, strenthening, re-cutting, devising interesting storage methods that allowed us to compact sails and move or hike them as necessary, something that was legal on this race.  Thanks Alex, and thanks Ballard Sails!

Nick Bannon, in addition to being a rock-star bowman, was a great help with boat prep, and he "owned the rig".  We did complete rig inspections including replacing running rigging, new masthead tricolors, new backstay, die checking our rod rigging, and a pretty huge list of other stuff.  (Need to rig a carbon spin pole--check!)  And he was our primary videographer.  Fine work, Nick!  He can drive, too...unusual for a bow guy~

Eli Secor was our chief carpenter, and assistant systems engineer.  He installed deeper sinks for doing dishes offshore, serviced the watermaker, re-built trim pieces (we break things, racing...) made offshore hatchboards, worked with Al on the emergency steering system, and generally put in more hours on the boat than anybody, except Al.

The list of work that Al performed on Kotuku would fill a novel.  Certainly more than even he could keep track of.  Want new rudder bearings?  Al figured out how to pull the rudder while we were in the water (lots of weight in the bow!)  And he installed them, too.  How about that SSB?  Al got it to work.  Um, those stupid B&G things that are supposed to tell us how fast we go?  Al replaced them, quickly and cost effectively.  And built an emergency rudder that you can use to park the boat in her slip.  And he re-built the autopilot.  And replaced the LP system.  And re-plumbed the head.  Oh, and when late in the game our prop started to fail, he said "I think I have one somewhere" and off he went to Anacortes to strip one off of his Imoca 60, Dogbark.  Plus he led both delivery crews, and navigated us around the Pacific quickly and safely.  Without Al, there would have been no race.  Thanks Al, for everything, from all of us!

Overall the experience was amazing.  We pushed the boat hard, and she responded beautifully.  The crew was tough, resilient, and damned near perfect.  Al put us in a position to win.  And we nearly did.  2nd in Class, 5th overall.  Beat some sleds and some really good sailors.  It probably came down to ratings, which on a race like this are hard to figure.  All I can say is I figure we gave it our best shot, and I am grateful to have been given the opportunity to sail across an ocean in a boat as fine as Kotuku, with a crew as good as this one.  Thanks to everyone who made this possible!

Looking Back on 2012

Good Memories

Good Weather

Good Sails!

Perseverance in Oregon Pays off in Canada

More Great Sails!

Good Friends Having Fun!

What a year!  We have had some amazing adventures together and some great times with great people. So many great people actually.  From this year's retro RTC crew, to the Pac Cup team and shore crew, to the winning efforts we put forth this spring at Southern Straits and Oregon Offshore.  (Good delivery help there too, come to think of it.)  It has been a truly remarkable year.  Thanks to everybody who participated!

Kotuku has been cruising more and more, and I don't think you will see her out many days on the race course as we move to the next phase of our sailing dream.  We will sure miss the excitement, the passion, the excellence that we developed as a team though.  It was as fine a group of sailors and people as I have worked with.  To go from a PNW newbie boat to winning the VanIsle 360, RTC a couple of times, Center Sound Series, Straits, and giving it all we had in the Pacific Cup, I wouldn't have believed it would be possible.  The hard work, the good times, the selfless contributions of each of you are what made it possible.  Thank you.

Fair winds in 2013!  We hope to see you soon on the docks, down the Sound or across an ocean.