Hurricanes and Calms

by Bob

There was a hurricane a few hundred miles southwest of us earlier today, but it has since fizzled into a tropical storm. We've been
getting some big swells from the south, a few of them about 12 feet high. Since the storm is so far away, the swells are pretty
gentle.

We are at 24°30'N 129°32'W. Water temperature is 70.8°F. No fish. There was a squid on the deck the other day.

The wind is varying from 8 to 20 knots from between 150 and 220 degrees. We have been flying the spinnaker "Thumper" for a day or
two. It's been pretty trouble-free until today when the wind got a little light and squirrelly.

It collapsed a time or two, and then it got wrapped around the forestay a few times. It took us four miles to untangle it. I don't
see how anything that big can get that wrapped up that fast. To make it harder, it wrapped itself around one of two forestays a few
feet apart. We did such a fine job of wrapping it that we couldn't lower the sock or the spinnaker halyard. But eventually, we got
it not only untangled but into the air with no visible damage.

Since then the spinnaker collapsed a couple more times. Of course, we could sit outside and steer and adjust the sheet, but that's
cheating. We're purists and prefer to stick with the autopilot.

I wrote a program so we can view the other boats, speed, progress, etc. on Garmin Mapsource or Google Earth from the 6:00 am
position reports we get by email. It looks bleak for The Minnow! But we're just getting our second wind. Our first wind was a few
days ago when we blew out Whomper.

Sunday morning we were the easternmost boat in the race to Hawaii. I expect this to earn us an Outstanding Navigator trophy.
Luckily, more boats started the race in California Sunday afternoon and they are now east of us.

Some of the first starters are stuck in light wind north of us. They have been out three days longer than we have, and may get to
Hawaii after us. I heard a couple of them talking on the radio today about running out of food. They won't run completely out, but
they may get into their reserves before they get to Honolulu.

Actually, we might not be as bad off as it seems. We're south, where the good wind is. Somehow, some other boats sneaked around us
and got south between here and Hawaii. But there are some boats to the north of us who have been doing about half our speed. Maybe
we can beat one of them. But not in corrected time.

The Minnow has a rating of 10. That means we have a 10-second per mile handicap, and we get to take 6 hours and 23 minutes off our
time to Honolulu. That sounds like a good deal, unless you consider the other boats in the race. There are only 3 boats out of 74 in
Transpac rated faster than The Minnow. Those are REALLY fast boats.

The other multihull, the trimaran LoeReal, has an established rating of -177. That means they have to add 5 days 13 hours to their
time. But the two fastest monohulls have -21:09 hour and +4:32 hour handicaps. I don't think it's likely that the LoeReal can beat
them, let alone by more than 4 days.

Our fast rating may be because we are racing in the multihull division. One group (ORCA) gave us a rating of 137, or 3 days 15 hours
in this race. That would give us 9-day advantage over LoeReal and we would beat them easily, which makes no sense. LoeReal is a real
racing boat stripped down without a piano, hot showers, or air conditioning.

The Minnow is about the speed of boats with a 3-4 day handicap, so with our 6-hour handicap we will almost certainly have the
slowest corrected time of any boat in the race. We excel!

But the rating doesn't matter. We're concerned with how many boats we can beat to Hawaii, and how many sails we'll have intact when
we arrive.

Mike broke out the piano today. We have an electric piano with a full-size keyboard and weighted keys. That means it plays just
about like a real piano. Mike's planning to play Beethoven's Sonatas 1 through 18 between here and Hawaii. He got through Sonata No.
1 tonight (in addition to some Bach), but he might have missed a note. I played Sonatas 8 and 14 tonight. I missed a lot of notes. I
may have to go for Beethoven's 5th symphony next. We have Liszt's piano transcription of Beethoven's Symphonies, and the night is
young.

John Jourdane wrote "Sailing with Scoundrels and Kings." He spoke at the Safety-at-Sea seminar before the race started and gave a
copy of his book to the attendees. It's a great book -- good sailing stories without all the puffery and sensationalism in a lot of
books.