The Latest on the Race Course
The fleet is in full sleigh-ride mode right now, and the barn door is in sight. The 35′ Paul Bieker designed, Jim Betts built Longboard is again pretending to be 15 feet longer than she really is. Owner/skipper Peter Salusbury had the boat built with this race in mind, and it shows. However, her lead on the fleet is soon to be history as the TP52s Valkyrie and Kinetic roar past. At the time of this writing, they’re all virtually the same distance from the finish. The Jeanneau 509 Equus and the Beneteau 47.7 String Theory are pushing each other in Division 2.
One real standout on the course is Raindrop sailed by Joby Easton and Bill Huseby. The Neolithic (well, about 45 years old anyway) Cascade 36 was prepped and is being sailed by great sailors, and is showing that it doesn’t take the latest carbon fitting to clean up on handicap.
Speaking of oldies but goodies, check out the Tripp 74 Atalanta as she makes her stately way to Hawaii. She and all the water she’s towing around are doing the race in style and comfort.
Crossfire‘s Long Road Back to Rum and Orange Juice
Lou Bianco and the Crossfire crew haven’t had an easy time of it since retiring. First off, the cacophony that the carbon hull produced downwind was apparent going into the waves as well, only this time accompanied by some serious slamming. Bruce Hedrick reported, “It is very difficult even in the nav station to write this because when we drop off a wave the shock goes through the entire boat and the chart table jumps, sharply….Motion on the boat is very tough. Much safer to crawl than walk. Working here in the nav station is tough as well.”
That said, they were heading upwind with the J5 at a decent clip when the next “challenge” hit, a broken fitting on the forestay. The initial thought was that sailing was out of the question, but making Neah Bay with the fuel on hand impossible. After a night motoring in some gnarly conditions, the gang figured out a way to jury rig with a storm trysail and a staysail. Bruce’s report: “After the wind backed off to 5-10 and we were absolutely sure we wouldn’t be putting the rig in danger we rigged the genoa staysail on an intermediate inner forestay we jury rigged. Once we got that sail up our speed went up to over 7.5 knots and we shut the engine off. As the wind and subsequently our boatspeed dropped, we decided to fly the storm trysail rigged as we normally would on the main mast. Looks pretty strange but in 5 knots of wind we are reaching at about 4.5 knots. The mast stayed rock solid throughout,” Hedrick reports.
It looks like Crossfire will make it to Neah Bay under here own power, and there are provisions for som USCG help should they fall a little short. There are even reports that an ad hoc team will be delivering some welcome rum and orange juice refreshments to the welcoming crew.
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.