Sunday, July 11 — 3:30 AM Here’s what a night watch is like. Since I’m running the Pac Cup morning (position report) and evening (informal) radio nets, I have assigned myself a fixed watch schedule. Everyone else rotates through the watches, so they don’t have to stand the 03:00 – 06:00 watch (for example) every […]

This has been a fast day for VALIS! We made 167 miles yesterday (8:00 AM to 8:00 AM), and at the current rate tomorrow’s numbers should be even better. We’ve got wind of 18-20 kts (occassionally up to 24 kts) on the beam, with seas big enough to give us the occasional push. Last night […]

Things are definitely looking up aboard VALIS! We’ve had good wind since midnight, and we are sailing reasonably fast towards Hawaii. We hope to go faster later in the race, but for now this is great. The sky remains overcast, and last night was actually colder than the night before — more layers were very […]

We have wind! It’s about eight knots from the NNW, which is letting us sail about five knots towards Hawaii. This is much better. For dinner we had a nice green salad, and then a second helping of mongolian beef and pork fried rice. Everyone ate! Life is good. Until tomorrow, Paul / VALIS

We’re stuck here, in pretty much the same place we were at our last report. The wind we had essentially shut itself off, and we’ve been ghosting along at less than one knot. The usual knotmeter reading is 0.00 KTS, and exclamations of joy and amazement are heard when the display shows anything besides zeroes. […]

Greetings from VALIS! Time:12:00 Noon PDT Position: 37d 55m N, 126d 34m W (about 195 miles due west of the Golden Gate Bridge) Speed: 1 kt, Course: 287d magnetic Wind less than 2 kts from the north As you might guess from the above data, we’re just bobbing around out here, waiting for the wind […]

Good evening from VALIS, on our third day of the Pacific Cup. Conditions have greatly improved, and we are sailing comfortablyat about six kts with of 10 kts from the south, in moderate seas. All crew is well, and we are generally having a great time. We’ve still got Coyote on the horizon, and we […]

July 7th, 2:00PM: We’ve had some very nice wind this morning. Of course, it’s from the south, and we’re still aiming for the north winds further out, so there may be some frustration ahead as the wind shifts. Still, we’re sailing around six kts to the west, which is good enough for now. We ran […]

July 6th, Day two: This has been a very slow day. We’ve got the swells, but where’s the wind? Since last night we’ve been sailing in company, and we are still in sight of some of them. The photo shows John with “Brainwaves” in the background. We’ve tried just about all possible combinations of sails […]

It js now 3:00 AM, and I have just come off my watch. Edward came up to replace me, and David still has an hour and a half to go. For the past three hours we have alternated between sailing very slowly, and just drifting — butt all in a generally west-pointing direction. Our weather […]