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 the morning roll call radio net today (as we will do for the entire race), and got to talk to most of the boats that have started — Doublehanded 1, Division A (we’re in that one), Doublehanded 2, and Division B. This year the doublehanders are allowed to report their position via satphone, and Pac Cup Headquarters emails us their positions so I can repeat them to the fleet during roll call. Most of the doublehanders are using the satphone option, but a few are using the old-school SSB marine radio like the rest of us.
After the net, we were hailed on the VHF radio by Phil, a friend and crewmember on “Coyote”. Phil was wondering if we wanted any Grey Poupon — I popped my head out the companionway and there they were not far astern. We can still see them to the south. Coyote is VALIS Pac Cup ’08 crewmember Steve Hill’s boat.
All crew are feeling well, and we are defrosting the Mongolian Beef with Pork Fried Rice for dinner.
-Paul

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 and settings, but when there’s very little wind and sloppy seas there’s just not a lot you can do but trim for minimum breakage!
Tonight we finally heated up John’s Ginger Chicken with rice. Four of us ate it and declared it delicious. The other two decided to skip dinner. They will be feeling better soon.
Regards, Paul

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 charts tell us there is wind out there, and we’re going to find it.
Around 1:00 AM Rich and I were visited by two dolphins. It was dark of course, but we could hear them breathing and see their phosphorescent outlines as they played alongside us.
I’m going yo get the layest weather data then hit the sack.
-Paul

Valis has begun the race!
We crossed the starting line at 11:48, three minutes late. We weren’t trying to be late, it just happened. We are now tacling out the main ship-channel, trying to stay in the deep water because of the seas (which aren’t very big — yet). The wind is a useful 15kts from the west. Our goal is to get ourselves 100 miles west so we can pick up the steady north wind.
We have started our watch rotation.. We stand watch for three hours, then get 4-1/2 or 6 hours off. During our off-watch time we cook, clean, help sail as needed, repair, and if there’s time left over, sleep.
The crew is well, and we are looking forward to a great passage.
More later, Paul

We are about to start the race: Pacific Cup 2010, from San Francisco to Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii.  The VALIS crew is:

David Nabors, Edward Killeen, Tirso, John Clinton, Rich Jones, and me, Paul Elliott.  Unfortunately, Paul Carson and Jack Thomas had other obligations — they will be missed, and I look forward to sailing with them again in the future.

We will be sending semi-regular updates to this blog, and you can see our (slightly delayed) positions on the Pacific Cup race tracking website: http://www.ionearth.com/2010/pacific-cup/

We start Monday, around 11:45 AM.  You can watch us, for a while, via our AIS tracker: http://www.sailvalis.com/AisTracking.htm

The St. Francis Yacht Club has a webcam that is supposed to be monitoring the starting line: http://207.150.197.186/

Aloha!

The 2010 Pacific Cup is about to begin. The VALIS team is starting to assemble, the boat is (almost) ready, we’re preparing and loading provisions, collecting our gear, and generally psyching ourselves up the competition.
We are also hoping for a glorious passage to Hawaii. However, the weather forecasts are looking pretty unpleasant for the start. In fact, all this coming week the conditions look challenging for getting out of the Gulf of the Farallones and into the regular northerlies. Keep in mind that these are forecasts, and the further out you go, the less reliable the predictions are. Our start is only 72 hours away though, and the forecast is probably fairly accurate. This is what the GRIBs are showing (gfs100702-06z.grb dated 2010/07/02 10:38:18Z).

July 5th – The Big Picture:

This is the Monday morning wfax chart. It’s a 96-hour forecast, issued yesterday. Note the strong stationary low near Fresno(?), and the 35-kt winds offshore of San Francisco. There is a gale warning out there.

July 5th – The Big GRIB Picture
 

Here is the GRIB picture of the same thing. Those are 17ft seas and 30kt winds about 150 miles offshore. Note the kink in the 1014 isobar, and how it is giving us light and scrambled winds as we leave San Francisco.

Starting Time: 

This is a detail view of the conditions at the July 5th start. We need to somehow get through the light winds (5kts or less) out into the strong northerly wind. Notice how the wind direction reverses beyond the Farallones. Working through that stuff in the increasing swells is not going to be fun.

 July 6th, 11:00AM:

The kink in the 1014 isobar has gotten worse.  So have the winds near the coast.

 July 7th, 11:00AM:

Here is the forecast for day three. Look at the widely-separated isobars west of Baja, and the light wind there. The Pac High is positioned well to the north and is well-focused. Perhaps a course closer to the rhumbline is indicated? This has not been a winning strategy in our past races though. It’s too soon to tell…

The race: The Spinnaker Cup — San Francisco to Monterey
The crew: Edward K, Jack T, John C, Keith S, Phil M, Rich J, and Paul E (me).

Just like Charlie, VALIS Don’t Surf. Or point, either. But great fun was had by all.

The race start was delayed by about an hour, since there was virtually no wind and a stiff flood current. Once our starting gun went off, we tacked against the flood towards the line, and it took a couple of passes before we made it over (the line was near the NW end of Angel Island). *All* the other boats (except for the doublehanded Galaxsea, who was still on the wrong side of the starting line) were heading over towards Yellow Bluff, so we did too, finding some current relief.

A Slow Start

We worked out through the channel, trading tacks with Galaxsea who had somehow caught up with us. After a couple of short tacks to avoid being run down by a very large ship we finally cleared Seal Rocks and were headed south.

With the apparent wind well forward of the beam at around 17 kts, we continued to head offshore, until we were almost four miles out from Pt. Montara. We had the main, genoa, and staysail up and were making about 7 kts. Galaxsea was behind us, and all the other boats *way* in front. Six miles ahead, Tiki J had an AIS transponder and we were watching them slowly walk away from us.

South of Pigeon Point we were finally able to set the spinnaker. 8 knots, 9, 10 knots boatspeed. Eleven knots! Tiki J was in our sights and we began to gain on her.

(L-R: Edward, Phil, Rich)

For dinner we had homemade chicken tacos, spanish rice, and beans. Nobody was seasick.

We kept the spinnaker flying until sometime around midnight when gusts of 30 kts made it impossible to keep from crashing. The third crash had the boom in the water and the big lightweight spinnaker wrapped around the furled genoa and staysail, flogging violently. Somehow, don’t ask me how, we managed to unwrap the mess, and douse the kite (Rich and I were on foredeck), and with no damage to the sail. At this point we could have put up the shy kite, but I decided that I had been sufficiently amused so from this point on we flew the white sails. Tiki J was safe.

We continued to make good speed, until the wind essentially shut off mid-Monterey Bay. The morning was spent hunting for wind, and slowly approaching Monterey. Around sunrise we found ourselves along the Monterey waterfront, with extremely light wind and a favorable 1/2 knot current. We checked in with the race committee at two miles, and with a few tacks to avoid the maze of buoys (tacks or jibes, it was hard to tell the difference) it took us about two hours to drift across the finish line. The only other boat on the water was Galaxsea. For a while that morning it looked like they might sneak past us, but their wind was just as elusive as ours. They finished about a quarter mile and fifteen minutes behind us.

First boat to finish: AKELA — 7 hours, 11 minutes, 6 seconds (a new course record)
VALIS — 20 hours, 22 minutes.

Apparently the trick was to finish Friday evening, before the wind shut off! Now we know.

The Sunday morning sail back home (actually, a motorsail) was an adventure. Rich, Phil, and I were the crew. There were strong wind and moderate seas in Monterey Bay, but once we got near Santa Cruz and headed out to sea, the swells really kicked up. We ended up with a deeply-reefed main and just the staysail. Around 10:00PM the wind and seas moderated and conditions were more comfortable for the rest of the sail. We arrived in Sausalito around 8:15 Monday morning.
-Paul

It was blowing like stink, and the seas were large enough to be annoying.  Here’s what it was like once we left Monterey Bay and headed out to sea:

Here is a Google Earth “kmz” file showing the track for VALIS during the race to Monterey and the return to San Francisco. I should probably mention that VALIS was motorsailing all the way home…

VALIS Spinnaker Cup 2010.kmz

We finished the race, drifting across the finish line around 8:30AM Saturday. That last ten miles was *slow*, and if we hadn’t found ourselves in the near-shore current we might still be out there. Exciting race report to follow.
Around 10:00 AM today (Sunday) we left Monterey and are currently motorsailing north towards Santa Cruz. The plan is to tacck and head offshore once we get to the north side of Monterey Bay, and then make our way north bqack to San Francisco.
Here in mid-bay the wind is about 15 kts from the NW, and the seas perhaps 4-5 ft.
-Paul