Our race starts on Monday (July 7) at 10:30 AM PDT.
We are in the “Alaska Airlines” division (Div A), and we will be battling it out with some old friends. Of particular note is “Cayenne”, skippered by Michael Moradzadeh who has crewed aboard VALIS in two previous Pac Cups. Michael has also raced Cayenne in past Pac Cups and has taken first place in his division (as did we in 2012). This is going to be interesting.
The Pacific Cup race tracker ( http://paccup.info/track.html ) will have a six-hour delay, but you should be able to watch our starting-line antics live via AIS: http://sailvalis.com/AisTracking.htm . Cayenne, and possibly other Div A boats also carry AIS transponders. Please remember that the AIS signals will probably disappear by the time we get to the Farallones (12 miles offshore), but they should reappear when we get close to Kaneohe. For that matter, our Pac Cup trackers have been known to malfunction, so please don’t worry if that happens.
As I type this, the Pac Cup Cruising Division fleet has just crossed under the Golden Gate Bridge. All five of these boats have AIS transponders, and you can watch them, at least for a few more hours, on any AIS viewing site such as http://www.marinetraffic.com/ .
By the way, VALIS was featured in the latest newsletter from Pacific Seacraft ( http://www.pacificseacraft.com/ ). Here’s a direct link to the newsletter: https://t.e2ma.net/webview/4qipl/29a93695b89e7677a0a46b089c46d931