Racing With Dummies! (Transpac Edition, Day 1)

By Mike

This could be called "Racing with Bob" or more accurately "Racing with a Dummy." But for some reason, "Racing with Dummies" sounds
better.

Pre-Start:
Over the last few days we prepared things. We sewed some, fixed a few things, added a few things, cleaned up a few things, and went
grocery shopping. This morning we got up and there wasn't much to do. So we walked around and looked at some of the other racing
boats.

One of the requirements for Transpac is a several-foot-long emergency rescue pole. We got one and installed it. It's really big and
in the way and we don't like it much. When we were looking at the other boats we looked and looked and couldn't find the long poles
on the other boats. So we asked the guy on Lucky where he kept his. He pointed to his MOM (man overboard module) and said, "in
there."

When we got back to the Minnow, I looked in our MOM manual and sure enough, we already had a pole. Now our new extra big pole is
stuffed up in the front hold of the boat.

The Start:
About 10:30 we started to start toward the starting line. In a sailboat race the racer has to cross the starting line after the
start. So they have a methodical process of countdowns to let the sailboats get a running start and time it just right. Since there
are a lot of different kinds of boats in Transpac, they have three different starting days. Today's was the middle one.

The starting times today were 1:00p for all of the monohulls and 1:10p for all of the multihulls. Since we were the only multihull
starting today we got our own personal start time! That was awfully nice of them considering we would have started about 10 minutes
after everyone else anyway, just for the extra elbow room.

And we got our own personal countdown, too. Problem is, they do the countdown on the boat radio, which is kind of hard to understand
sometimes. And they use terms that haven't quite figured out – like "flag down" and "15 seconds till ????? flag." But we had an
advantage … we got to see the monohulls start. Ten minutes after they started the guy on the radio confirmed that it was time to go
when he said "good start Minnow and good luck" or something similar.

Naturally we mashed the autopilot button and proceeded to play Stars and Stripes Forever to celebrate our "good start."

The Race to Catalina:
After we finished playing we got down to serious sailing business. We unfurled our brand new big jib (thanks Skip!) and rolled up
our little one. And we were going fast! About 8-9 knots. We were feeling pretty good. We were even catching up with some of the
monohulls, but they were off to the right a little bit.

One of the racing rules requires all the boats to go north of Catalina Island, about 20 miles out. It's west-southwest of the
starting line. The wind was blowing from west-northwest. The Minnow would only go fast in the direction of southwest. When we turned
right enough to miss the island we slowed down to 3-4 knots. Blah.

In the Minnow, we have two good engines and normally a lot of diesel. When we need to go upwind we typically turn them on.
Therefore, we don't have much practice at sailing upwind. Today we got some practice.

After our second tack all the monohulls disappeared behind Catalina and Bob went downstairs to take a nap. It sure was lonely. A
couple of tacks later (and four hours after the start) we passed the durned island.

The Race from Catalina:
Once Catalina was behind us I turned left and tried to go fast. Direction didn't matter that much to me at that point. By moving the
sails back and forth a lot and raising the daggerboards, I got us going around 11 knots. Then Bob got up and said "it's about time
you got us moving!"

The autopilot was on wind-vane mode (70 degrees off of the apparent wind on starboard tack) which headed us pretty much
south-southwest. It seemed like a good direction to go. We did see some monohulls eventually, but we think they mostly went more
westerly than us.

Daily Cuisine:
I don't know what it is about the first day or two at sea. My body reacts differently. I feel like eating. Eating a lot, and eating
often. In the first 8 hours of racing I ate about 8 times. The menu included lots of oreos, an apple, a banana, a bunch of Tostitos,
a "Bob's Gourmet Tuna Fish Sandwich, a bunch of pretzels, some cereal, a Snack Pack, and some other junk lying around.

Fishing report:
They weren't biting!

Arts and Entertainment:
We played sousaphone duets quite a bit on the way to the starting line. I know, I know, … that probably doesn't qualify as either.

Other than that, I would say that the most entertaining thing was the disappearing act of the monohulls around Catalina!