Pacific Cup Day 8 – Wind

Did anyone imagine it could be this windy for this long on the way to Hawaii. Since leaving San Francisco we have not seen less than 10 knots of wind and have only seen less than 15 for maybe 30 minutes in total. Today has been the windiest so far. More like 20-30. Our experiments to find a sail configuration that is safe, easy to steer, and fast suceeded this morning. We put up the A0 and took down the main. This allowed to sail really low, straight towards Kaneohe without the A0 collapsing behind the mind and we went plenty fast given the wind. That was working great all day and we planned to keep with that configuration over night as steering was quite easy too. Unfortunately, the cover for the tack line parted at the rope clutch easing the tack out about 10′ in 30 knots. This caused a round up and a full kite way out too leeward. We had to cut the core of the tack line. Grind in the sheet and then ease the halyard to get the spinnaker back on board, The big concern the whole time was the kite filling with water way to leeward and pinning the boat on its side. As it was, we got it back on board without getting it too wet. So, up with the main and this time we’ve put up the storm jib just to put some pressure on the bow to help reduce roundups and/or make them easier to recover from.

All that said, we are going pretty fast toward Hawaii. Some pretty amazing long surfs on huge waves too. I can’t count how many times we’ve seen over 15 knots of boat speed. Hoping for an arrival late Saturday evening or early Sunday morning.

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