the final run!! Sunday 7/27

DATELINE JULY 27, 1600 PST, PACIFIC OCEAN NEAR HAWAII,

hi folks

SHIVVER ME TIMBERS!! this is going to be close. at this morning's check in, to our delight and amazement, we were 15 minutes AHEAD of tiki blue. heaven only knows what the night had held for them. for us, the night was too rowdy for words. we smoked through several squalls with the last one about 0300 clocking in at 30 knots. but we handled it well on course and with lots of nail biting but no real problems. we went like crazy clocking 11-12s+ and one 15.8 by jack a new but short lived record.

there was only one squall to go that night and it looked kind of puny compared to the looming black clouds in the one before. the rain came and it started to blow. the wind was up to 30 right away and we were screaming through it. jack was driving but it was more and more obvious that the storm was building and would not hold at 30. the inevitable round up that could not come under control lead to wild variations in course amid huge seas and wind that reached 40 easily. the kite, old yeller, was flogging mercilessly and the crew was more and more apprehensive. finally, in an effort to fill the spinnaker by heading down, a wave added a bump in the wrong direction and we jibed. Bequia was pinned with the kite and the main holding her down at a crazy angle. the preventer was so loaded up it could not be released. eventually a wave released us and the boat came up on its feet.

a fresh driver, Jeff, took over. it seemed things were getting under control. jeff said something like "trusty old yeller" just as the kite filled... and then quit drawing at all. death of a legend. photos of the pieces to follow...

now it was time to take down the remnants. Dennis and jack headed forward while mike and tom managed lines in the cockpit and Jeff drove. only the main was up as the boat careened up and down barely under control. boat speed went from 14s to 15s to 16.8! ! for those who have no way to compare, that is incredibly fast. the noise was deafening. crew shouted to each other as loudly as possible as Stephen took the shredded kite into the forward hatch add the pole was recovered.

after a few minutes efforts began to furl out the jib which was let out about 8 feet at first then as time went by let out to the second reef point. meanwhile down below, the boat was in a shambles with everything on top of everything else. Dennis was muttering and Stephen was swearing but some semblance of order finally took over. as the sun came up, the second chute was launched.

with the news that we were ahead of tiki blue, the crew was ecstatic. we redoubled our efforts to drive perfectly on the best downwind angles with no errors in line or motion. mid afternoon we figured we were going well but fell into another wind hole, uncharted on the grib files and unpredictable in any other way. the crew struggled with hundreds of variations of steering angle, main and spinnaker trim. but at least an hour of maximum boat speed was lost.

we had no idea how we were doing vis a vis our competitor. did they suffer the same lack of wind? at 3:17 Tiki Blue made her 25 mile check in. we were 58 miles out, a 33 mile difference. by handicap they give us 4 hours and a few minutes. tom figured that our overall trip average was just above 7.25 knots. that computes to a dead heat if we only make our average and a win if we beat our average even by a minute.

we are directly upwind of the finish. all provided input based on hunch, experience, rumor and OUIJA predictions but tom gave us our real info. the wind veers near oahu so we will contrive to come in on port pole with that in mind. By tonight we'll know.

jack

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