J/125, J/120 & J/145 Dominant Competitors(San Francisco, CA)- The forty-six boats racing in the 17th edition of the Pacific Cup left from the San Francisco city front (off the St Francis Yacht Club) at noon on Monday July 16, sailing under the famed Golden Gate Bridge to Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii. The 2070 nautical mile race runs every even (non-TransPac) year is always full of surprises. This year the first boats to start had to fight light airs to get offshore from San Francisco to get into the first breezes of the Pacific High, the last starting boats had a much easier time of it.
Andy Costello, skipper of J/125 DOUBLE TROUBLE, so far is having a great race, second only boat for boat to a 60 footer. Meanwhile, the J/120 sailing in the double-handed division, JAMANI sailed by Sean & Jeff Mulvihill from Park City, Utah are also sailing at the top of their division. In Division B the J/42 TIKI J skippered by Kim Worsham of Portland, Oregon (http://www.sailblogs.com/member/tikij/ or http://www.tikij.com/) and the J/35c BRAINWAVES skippered by Jim Brainard from Golden, Colorado are also having good races so far.
From Double Trouble, navigator Skip McCormack reported on Saturday that this is the first (Hawaii) race he’s sailed where he’s never worn his thermals. “It's been incredibly warm and pleasant.”
When I last spoke to McCormack he was removing any item possible from the boat to lighten it up - clearly their priorities were inline by opting to keep the small luxuries, “The olive oil has been broken out for the Indian food on tonight's menu, but we had to use a few teaspoons to drop in the top rudder bearing for lubricant to stop the incessant squeaking,” he said.
Back to racing, McCormack says they were anxious about sailing the longer distance and having the high consolidate early and release the boats to their North quicker than anticipated. “However, it appears that did not occur and as of this morning's 11am report, we had nosed out on the fleet (except Icon) and rumbling towards the next shift.
Our goal is to keep the boat moving faster through the water and cross in front of the fleet to gain leverage to the NW as the breeze shifts right Monday night and Tuesday morning.
The DT is a different beast than many of our competitors. Being lighter and shorter, we will be sailing hotter angles and more distance. The tracker shows us doing just that, about 1.5kts faster through the water, but on an angle upwards of 5-15 degrees higher than our competitors.”
After a weird first few days of this edition of the Pac Cup, the weather appears to be trending more traditionally, according to weather guru Lee Chesneau, "It's an absolutely ideal scenario for this race now. The High is in the right position, the winds will begin to veer - for all the boats that are west of 135, the winds will veer from northerly to north easterly. Once they get past 140-145 west, then the winds begin to become a little more easterly. It’ll be an interesting strategy for those who opted a higher latitude, they’ll probably have a better angle into Hawaii than those who opted to go south and then try to cut over. But, wind speed will remain in the 15-20 range, with waves to 8 feet - very traditional." Sailing photo credits- Erik Simonson / h2oshots.com For more Pacific Cup sailing information
