Racing With Dummies! (Transpac Edition, Day 2)

by Mike

It sure was cold this morning about 3:30 when I woke up and decided to take over for Bob. After I put on all my clothes and a jacket
I went up stairs and volunteered. He told me to go back to bed since he just started a movie. I complied. It sure was warm under the
covers.

About 5:00 came my real chance to drive the boat. He told me there were a few boats around and that he had not touched the sails.
Not bad! I carried on throughout the morning without messing with them either. Very good!

But don't get the idea that my morning was idle. At 5:59 I had to find the phone that was ringing as a reminder to write down the
6:00 boat location. It took a couple of minutes to find it, so I actually wrote down our 6:01 position (don't tell Transpac). And
then at 7:30 I had to get on the SSB radio and tell the Transpac people where the Minnow was at 6:00
(actually 6:01, haha).

Amongst this flurry of activity I was able to watch a movie and fry up some eggs. I also spent some time looking at other sailboats
with binoculars and played around with the sextant some (since the rules say we have to do some navigating with it on the race).

Bob got up sometime late in the morning and we started talking about which direction we should try to go. We figured with the other
boats around us we were in pretty good shape. Around lunchtime the wind started unfreshening and we started talking about putting up
a spinnaker. Neither of us wanted to, but we thought we might go faster with it.

We had about decided to skip spinnaker-raising when we noticed that 2 of the 7 boats we could see had spinnakers up. It was about
1.5 hours later when we got the spinnaker up the second time. Not bad for us.

The first time we raised it, Bob let go of the rope that controls the raising and lower of the sock (yes, I blame him). It only
would have dangled him about 15 feet in the air if he would have held on. But with every cloud there is a sliver of lightning … or
something like that. The rope that we needed to pull down on was about 15 feet above our reach. We tried a variety of ways to grab
it. Eventually found a use for our new-extra-big-emergency-rescue-pole. We taped it to an extended boat hook and managed to snag the
rope.

Around 45 minutes after our first spinnaker-raising, we accomplished our first spinnaker lowering. We searched for the problem and
didn't find it. So we tied an extension to the raising and lowering rope and raised the spinnaker again. This time we sailed on
happily.

A few hours later about 20 feet of extra rope fell out of the spinnaker. Imagine that.

Daily Cuisine:
My main courses for me were fried eggs, a"Bob's Gourmet Tuna Fish Sandwich, and spaghetti. There were also chips, pretzels, Snack
Packs, and cookies, and other things to keep my energy up.

Fishing report:
They weren't biting (again)!

Arts and Entertainment:
The other boat in our class is called LoeReal. It's a 60-foot trimaran that was used in the movie Waterworld. It doesn't take off
until Sunday since it's fast. And it didn't arrive in Long Beach before we left.

So … we watched the movie "Waterworld" to scout the competition. I think we're in trouble.