Firefly was first to finish in this year’s Vic-Maui Race. I don’t have an official time yet, but the tracker says it all. Indications are Joy Ride will finish a couple hours later and correct to first overall. Congratulations to Bob Strong and his crew, and to the navigator and my friend Brad Baker, who I gotta say seems to own this race.
Here’s Brad’s last report, a somewhat wistful look as the final hours of the race approached and a doff of the hat to the competition:
Well, we are under 24 hours and are pushing hard. We have the 2S up and are up as high as she will go, also flying the staysail. If Joyride is going to beat us, they are going to have to keep pushing. And it does look as though they will beat us. But as Stu so aptly put it the other night, “It aint over until the fat lady sings”. So we push.
The last 48 hours have been splendid sailing. We’ve been in the trades sailing in winds ranging from 13 knots to 23 knots. Because of our odd route this time around, we are much hotter coming in to Maui then in years past. Except the year I did it on Voodoo Child #1 where we had a similar approach towards the end. We are much further north and west of where you would typically approach from. This comes, as I said, from the atypical route we took. It was a very different year from my years past. The high pressure moved well west of where it would normally be and the quickest route ended up being west of great circle. It’s been challenging, and because of that fun from a navigator’s standpoint. It was much later in the race this time round where my choices became limited and you must basically sail to Hawaii. That said, there are still choices to be made. Choices like what sail to have up.
As I mentioned earlier we have the 2S. This is a big running sail. When we put it up the winds were lifted and lighter. Now its consistently blowing over 20 knots and we are headed a bit. We are going fast, but sailing lower then where we want/need to go. In other words, we are going to have to make a change soon. We will likely go to 5S, a “reachier,” smaller kite, and see if we can point to where we need to go. If not then the call will likely be to go to the Code 0, an even smaller much reachier sail. Hopefully it won’t come to that.
It’s interesting, we haven’t had a lot of the normal talk about food and drinks etc. I do have to admit my watch, the b-team, did have a discussion on what drinks we were going to have. My choice is a margarita blended. Actually, I’ll take whatever they are serving at the party! It will be interesting to see the reactions of the newbies, often times the finish can be an odd thing. You have come together as a team, and it ends. It can be quite a letdown. That’s why having the party in Lahaina is so important. It tends to soften the blow of having done the race and the feeling of emptiness that can follow. It typically doesn’t last that long though and normalcy returns. Me personally, I am looking forward to the finish, I just we had a couple more days to put some more miles on Joyride! They have done a nice job and stayed in the game. My hat goes off to them win or lose.
I don’t know that I will blog again before the finish. Current ETA is to finish perhaps at 6am or do local time. I actually have to give it a look and come up with and ETA for the race organizers. I’ll give it some serious thought and analysis and will come up with our official ETA which I have to report at the next roll call. Thank you to all the folks out there that are sharing this experience with us. We have some great Drone footage that will get posted after we arrive. Stay tuned!
–Brad
Update: This is one way to celebrate first to finish:
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.