Vic-Maui is delivering some of her best to the 2016 fleet, but unfortunately claimed another retirement, the J/109 Mountain (with rudder bearing issues).
Winds are in the 20s supported by a strong high pressure system. The boats are pointed at Hawaii making great speeds. While it’s great for the speeds and crews, if there’s a weak piece of equipment anywhere on the boat, there’s a good chance it will fail. So much of these races is determined before ever casting off from the dock.
Mountain was having a great race until her retirement. Standouts still in the race include Raindrop (no surprise here) and Longboard (no surprise here, either). Those that kept too far to the west suffered, but now everybody seems on track. Coming up fast are the TP 52s Valkyrie and Kinetic and the SC70 Westerly. With Crossfire headed home, it’s likely to be one of those three that claims the elapsed time victory and very possibly the record.
In the most recent update to the tracker, a number of boats have gybed to port, making the fleet look more like it’s in a tactical downwind leg than a parade to Hawaii. Eventually they’ll have to pick the time for the big Goldilocks Gybe, according to “Guru” Brad Baker. (The guru moniker was provided by the Vic-Maui organizers, he’s still Brad to me).
Baker posted a weather outlook yesterday, reprinted in part below. Check out swiftsureyachts.com for the rest of the story.
The sleigh ride has begun!
Brad Baker Vic-Maui Analysis #3 – July 16, 2016
First off my heart goes out to Lou and crew aboard Crossfire as they have retired from the race. I don’t know the details as to why beyond what was reported on the website, that they had a couple of gear failures. You can see on the tracker that they are now on starboard tack beating their way back home to Seattle. I hope that all are well on board and wish them a safe trek back.
Here is a screen shot of the University of Washington’s WRF-GFS showing the 1040mb on July 18, well North and West of the usual spot. It’s hard to find a better pattern for a quick race.
In the last blog I predicted a fast race, record breaking in fact. That is still very much a possibility, even with the fastest boat out of the mix. The weather models continue to show a high pressure system, which currently is around 1035 mb, to build to 1040 mb and obligingly move west and north for the fleet. This has allowed the competitors to point their boats directly at Hawaii. The wind will shift from a more northerly to a more easterly direction as they loop under this monster high pressure system. The most critical decision they will all have to make is when to gybe from starboard to port. A gybe to soon and they find themselves having to sail lower and slower to Hawaii and maybe find they have to jibe back to starboard on an unfavorable shift. A gybe to late and they will have needlessly sailed extra miles. They need to find the Goldilocks gybe, not to soon, not too late, but just right!
routing for right now. It’s hard to distinguish as the tracks are nearly identical, but I have run routing for both Raindrop and also from Valkyrie
Honestly though, this pattern really isn’t rocket science, and
Here is a shot of the pattern just after the gybe
it will be fairly easy to find a good place to make the jibe. The wind shift will more or less dictate this. The real premium will be on boat speed and holding it all together. With the high pressure system so massively strong there will be an incredibly large area with enhanced trade wind conditions, literally 1200 miles. This means the boats will be sailing in 20 knots plus for quite some time. To put this in perspective the average tradewind speed is about 14 or 15 knots. The well prepared boats that avoid gear failures, and are able to keep the boat moving flying the spinnaker 24 hours, day and night, will be the ones that excel. By the end of this race there will be plenty of stories of parted halyards, wrapped spinnakers on forestays, blown up spinnakers and probably a few boats that have steering issues.
This shot shows the forecast pattern 3/4 of the way through the race
There will also be stories of surfing at high speeds under a brilliant starlit night, with bio-luminescence sparkling in their wake, all the while listing to Dark Side of the Moon on the stereo. It’s magical out there, life changing. Read on….
Brad Baker has been navigator on seven of his nine Vic-Maui races, with two first to finish finishes, two first overall finishes and 4 more first in class finishes.
Brad is a principal at Swiftsure Yachts.
Kurt grew up racing and cruising in the Midwest, and has raced Lasers since the late 1970s. Currently he is a broker at Swiftsure Yachts. He has been Assistant Editor at Sailing Magazine and a short stint as Editor of Northwest Yachting. Through Meadow Point Publishing he handles various marketing duties for smaller local companies. He currently is partners on a C&C 36 which he cruises throughout the Northwest. He’s married to the amazing Abby and is father to Ian and Gabe.