I’m still hoping to get some inside stories from the Seventy48. For those of you unaware, last weekend’s race was a non-sailing (all human powered) prelude to the R2AK. Seventy miles in 48 hours. The course, simply from Tacoma to Port Townsend. The winners Greg Spooner and Thiago Silva did it in about 11 hours in the two person shell Imua.
Jan Anderson stepped up once again with some great shots. Like the R2AK, this event is much more about participation than it is the winning and losing. Check these pix out, the check out the full gallery.
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.
Yesterday the Pacific Northwest lost not only a great sailor
but one of the classiest gentleman I have ever had the privilege to sail with.
Dick Robbins, the owner and skipper of the legendary 68- foot Perry designed
ICON passed away from complications of a stroke he had suffered recently. His
talents went far beyond sailing having designed and built revolutionary tunnel
boring machines, including the ones that dug the Chunnel beneath the English
Channel. He was a delight to sail with as there was never a cross word nor did
he ever raise his voice. Just always a very quiet competence as well as a love
of sailing and having fun while on the water. He made the world a much better
place and he will be missed.
Lots going on this weekend and plenty of great weather to go
along with it. The Van Isle 360 has a huge and very talented fleet on a very
challenging course. The Seventy48 project doesn’t involve sailing but it is
still a very cool event. Basically, any way you can get from Tacoma to Port
Townsend by way of rowing, paddling or pedaling and by pedaling I don’t mean on
land. It all has to be on the water, 70 miles in 48 hours. They start tonight at 1900 hours going out of
the Foss Waterway, up Colvos Passage then to the Port Townsend Canal or Hadlock
Canal, then finish in Port Townsend. A great tune-up for the R2AK which starts
on the 3rd. We’ll have a special update for that on the 2nd
of June.
May 31 500MB
May 31 Surface Analysis
June 1 Surface Forecast
June 2 Surface Forecast
June 3 Surface Forecast
June 4 Surface Forecast
As you can see from the Surface Analysis, we have a weak
high-pressure system off the Northern California coast and a weak low-pressure
system in Eastern Washington. As our fog burns off and the sun heats up the
land, this will bring a strong onshore flow down the Straits of JdF bringing
with it Gale Warnings for the Central and Eastern Straits as well as a Small
Craft Advisory for Admiralty Inlet. After midnight, this will ease and we
should have a very nice weekend to be on the water.
For the Van Isle folks, this will mean a nice beat from
Nanaimo to Deep Bay in 8 to 15 knots of northwesterly.
For the Seventy48 teams, there will be northerly of about
8-12-knots from the start until they get into Colvos Passage and then after
about 2100 hours they should have just about ideal conditions for whatever
manner of propulsion they have selected. After midnight, there maybe a drainage
east-northeasterly of 5-10-knots in the early morning hours then as the sun
comes up that will die until the onshore flow develops in the early afternoon
bringing 10-12-knots of northwesterly down the Sound.
Of course, if your paddling or rowing you’re going to want
to keep track of the tidal current however with most of these craft being of
very shallow draft you can really get in close to stay out of the anti-water.
It seems to me they took some fun out of the event by making them go through
the Hadlock Canal but they probably had a very good reason for doing that. It’s
just that in the flood tide you can get 3 to 3.5 knots of current in there
while you could avoid that by going around the outside of Marrowstone.
The good news is that since the current always flows north
in Colvos Passage, it will be a free ride until they get up to Blake Island.
The other good news is that the currents in the central Sound will be less than
one knot almost all weekend. In Admiralty Inlet, the max currents will be
around two knots and since the shortest possible course will take keep you on
the beach anyway, you’ll be able to avoid the worst of it until Hadlock.
Currents at West
Point
Friday
2000 Slack
Saturday
0018 Max Flood .72 knots
0330 Slack
0518 Max Ebb .47 knots
0742 Slack
1300 Max Flood .89 knots
1618 Slack
1800 Max Ebb .48 knots
2054 Slack
All in all, it looks like a lot of exercise but should be
a total hoot.
Bruce has raced and cruised the Pacific Northwest his entire life. He earned a Bachelor’s of Science from the University of Washington in Biological Oceanography and learned meteorology “to keep from getting kicked around on the race course.” Bruce spent nearly two decades as Associate Publisher for Northwest Yachting Magazine, retiring in mid-2015, and was the chairman of the board of trustees for the Northwest Marine Trade Association in 2014. (photo of Bruce driving Playstation is a bit dated, but cool)
