Van Isle – Day 11: New speed record!
For the Ucluelet to Victoria leg, we had 97 miles ahead of us. The forecast was for things to be pretty light at the start, that we would have to navigate around a big wind hole, and then that we’d have some wind in the Straits of Juan de Fuca. One local weather guru noted that there was even a gale warning for the central and eastern part of the straits, but that in his opinion, that might not be warranted. We offloaded our key items and then did a second pass to offload more to keep the boat light. Ron and Marge (our shore crew extraordinaires) somehow found niches for our gear.
Our start went well – we avoided getting caught out away from the line, and we were in position on the right side (west) of the course to get any new breeze from the west. We hoisted the kite at the start and slowly eked our way above the majority of the fleet into the lumpy swells.
The forecast was pretty much spot on…until we got into the Straits. Once there, the wind started to build, and then it kept building. We had our A2 kite up, and we were moving great with it until we saw speeds hitting the high twenties and decided we did not want to blow up that kite, so we changed down to our heavier A2. The breeze continued to build slowly into the low thirties, but there were no real gnarly puffs, so it seemed manageable as the boat and crew accepted the breeze as a sort of new normal. The swell from behind us occasionally corkscrewed the boat, but we were able to keep everything sorted and moving forward pretty quickly. We had company from the Division 1 boat, Ultraman 3, whose path converged quickly with ours, and we opted to call them on the radio to tell them to cross our bow and giddy up along. They did, and then we kept busy keeping the boat under control, watching a pod of dolphins race us on the bow, and listening to ships contact other boats in our fleet to communicate which side to pass on. Our transit from Neah Bay to Race Rocks took approximately 5.5 hours, which seemed pretty quick to us (that’s averaging just under 10 knots!).
We had already decided that we’d avoid Race Rocks Passage given the breeze, that we’d be under kite, and that we’d only been through Race Rocks Passage once (last year was the first, when we raced Swiftsure). It also helped that the course was not going to penalize us hugely by taking the more conservative route, so it was an easy and prudent choice. We knew to expect the breeze to pick up, and it did – smoothly and swiftly. We watched the breeze tick up, all the way to 38 knots, and we absolutely flew by Race Rocks…and then suddenly the breeze was down to under 5 knots. We started scrambling to do a kite change to our light air A2, but then the breeze picked up again so that we were quickly underway to the finish in 20 knots. After the excitement earlier, 20 knots felt like nothing.
It was easily one of the best sailing days we’ve ever had. The boat was relatively easy to drive, the superhero crew did fantastic work with sail changes and trimming, we saw whales and dolphins, and we had the company of the moon to help us along in the darkness.
In the end, we saw a top speed of just over 15 knots of boat speed and 38 knots of wind speed. Some of the Division 3 boats saw higher wind speeds (up to 45 knots). We had chased Zulu hard, but they beat us to the finish by 24 minutes. We crossed 2nd and managed to hold onto 2nd for our final position. And we managed to keep our kites intact and have no other breakages. Even more good news, we gained a little in the overall and are now only 3 points of second and 4 points out of first with one leg to go. It’s all to play for!
You guys are a FORCE!