VALIS Position July 6, 8:00 AM:
Latitude 33deg 25min N
Longitude 126deg 55min W
We are still heading southwest, under ligtht winds and calm seas. With the asymettrical spinnaker up, we are sailing at 6 knots in seven knots of wind, but more wind would be nicer, All day yesterday we were under full main, genoa, and staysail, and sailing at 8 to 9 knots in 20+ knot winds.
I am now about to get our email, which has today’s weather charts and predictions (I hope). They will show us if we need to change our strategy, which is mainly choosing the point to stop sailing southwest, and start pointing directly towards Hawaii.
For dinner last night, we had Italina sausage and tomato sauce, over white rice. This was a welcome change from our previous diet of saltine crackers, and everyone seems to be getting their sea-legs. We all stood watches last night, with Ville and Paul taking the 9:00PM to 1:00 AM watch, Danile and Andrew taking the 1:00AM to 5:00AM watch, and Ville and Paul taking the 5:00AM to 9:00AM watch. After 9:00 AM, we have no set schedule, but we try to keep two people on duty at all times.
Aloha,
The crew of VALIS

Aloha from VALIS!
Time: 1:48 PM PDT
Position: 35 deg 12 min N, 125 deg 13 min W
Speed: 8.2 kts
Course: 204 deg magnetic
We are truly underway. We finally started our race a day late, crossing the start line at 11:09 PDT. The winds were good, the current favorable, and we crossed the favored end of the line as if we were pros. I suppose having the line all to ourselves may have helped… Anyway, we were under the bridge and out into the pacific within four tacks. Due to the ebb current the seas were up a little, so we stayed in the main channel all the way out.
Once in the Pacific, we turned southwest on our way to the tradewinds. The winds were 20+ knots, up to 30 kts at times, so even with deeply reefed main and genoa we were sailing at 8 to 9 knots (fast, for us). Several hours after our start, we could see the sails of the “Division C” Pacific Cup fleet, who had started 12:10 (an hour after us). We watched them spread out, some going north of us, other south. These are faster boats, and they slowly passed us over the rest of the night and afternoon (we assume they all passed us, but we only saw a few of them).
We split up into two watch teams (Paul and Ville, Daniel and Andrew) and stood 4-hour watches all night. We saw the running lights of several sailboats, many phosphorescent jellyfish(?), and Paul saw one very strange creature that looked like a 15 foot long glowing hose, serpentined on the surface of the water.
In the morning, we participated in the Pacific Cup radio position report, which takes place at 9:00 AM PDT. We are now steering, sleeping, eating, and typing.
Aloha,
Paul, Daniel, Ville, Andrew
I have attached a Google Earth logfile showing our progress to-date — click to open

july5.kmz

VALIS and her crew are heading to Hawaii!
Our position on July 5, 8:50 PDT is Latitude 35deg 44min North, Longitude 124deg 42min West.
We did fix our problem, and crossed the starting line on July 4, 11:09 PDT. We are sailing at 8+ knots in a southwest direction. The seas are moderate, the winds fresh at 20-25 knots, and the skies are overcast.
The crew are doing well. More to come…
-Paul

As you may know, VALIS was unable to start The Pacific Cup Race today
(Monday) due to a mechanical problem that was discovered at the last
minute (and this was after two significant shake-down sessions).
We believe that we have correctly analyzed the problem and fixed it, and
we have performed initial testing with good results. We intend to give
it a complete testing early Tuesday morning, and if this turns out as
planned, we would like to cross the starting line July 4 around 11:30,
which is a 24-hour delay from our originally scheduled Division B start.
This should keep us out of the way of the Division C starters at 12:10.

Also, one of our crew has had to drop out. This moves us back to our
original plan, which is to do the race with a crew of four: Paul,
Daniel, Ville, and Andrew. We won’t get as much sleep, but at least
we’ll have more space to do it in!
-Paul

I’ve just “improved” my logfile-crunching program, and here are the
results. Google Earth should be able to read this file and show our
track out to the Farallons and back. The last couple of hours were lost
for some reason – it probably happened when I brought the PocketPC into
the cockpit to play with the AIS function as we were watching the ships
steam by.

-Paul

VALIS-May 28-29 2006.kmz

We finally made it to the Farallon Islands, rounding the southern island
in the morning of May 29, 2006. This was after a very trying evening
under heavily reefed main and staysail, with winds and seas conspiring
to put the entire crew “off their feed”. But survive we did, and the
morning found us in a position to lay the island on a nice beam reach.
We rounded the island and made it back to the Gate in time to catch the
end of the flood tide (for a change). Once inside the bay, we were
astounded by the number of boats that were enjoying a nice Memorial Day
sail. I have uploaded a Google Earth file showing our track, with
hourly waypoints that include our SOG and AWS.

Now, to get some sleep!
-Paul

The Far Side of the Farallons

On Thursday, May 11, Ville and I took VALIS over to Anderson’s Boatyard in Sausalito. There, she was hauled out, power-washed, had all the rough spots sanded down, and then was given a couple coats of new bottom paint. We also replaced the zincs, lubed the Max-Prop, and gave everything below the waterline some careful scrutiny. No problems were evident.

VALIS was splashed and moved back to her home slip on Wednesday, and on Thursday I installed the AIS receiver, and installed the emergency rudder, taking photos of how it all goes together. I think I have worked out a pretty good way to control the rudder — we will have a tiller attached to the windvane socket, and pivoting at the lower pushpit rail. I’ve got to fabricate the tiller assembly, but that should be pretty easy. We will need to test it at sea ASAP.

I’ve been talking with J.P. about the remaining jobs that need doing, and I think we are in good shape. There will be some more hardware upgrades completed before we head out, and these should further improve our safety margins.

-Paul

The propane stove has been repaired by Ville and me. We now have a new regulator, but that wasn’t the problem (as it turned out). The real culprit was the electric shut-off valve, which was only opening the slightest bit, and seemed to close off as the solenoid coil heated up. We replaced the valve assembly, and the stove again works great. The electric ignitors are still a bit touchy, but they all do work.

Now, on to the next to-do item!

-Paul

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