Kinetic Vic-Maui Report 07-10

Kinetic friends:

Winds are fresh again today at around twenty knots, the skies have cleared to full stars (last night) and pure sunshine, and we have been blasting along at great speeds.   More on that later. 

We had a fun halfway celebration onboard Kinetic at lunchtime today.  Both watches were on deck for lunch together, we sang pirate songs, had lunch and some treats including a surprise which Jeff baked up - pumpkin pie-lets, or as we decided to call them, pumpkin doubloons. 

Not long after the party, and while the video camera was still running, the fool of a pirate on the helm steered the boat into a full scale round-up wipeout, with spinnaker flogging madly and boom dragging in the water.   In the midst of this madness, another crew member was seen madly waving a pirate cutlass.  We soon managed to bear off onto our original course, with the only damage being to the skipper's ... errrr ... pirate helmsman's dignity. 

This particular spinnaker was not the one we were forced to cut down, but rather another sail that tore, was repaired and re-hoisted only to have the repaired area fail immediately.  So we re-repaired it, even more sturdily, and it held all day today at boat speeds of 8-10 knots with some higher peak speeds.  How much higher?  Well, we were routinely seeing surges into 13, 14 and even a few to 15 knots.  Then, around 2 pm, with Bill driving, we accelerated on a puff and a series of waves to over 17 knots before the bow plowed into and parted with great force the next two waves in front of the boat.  Water was everywhere.  This didn't beat our best speed of over 18 knots from earlier in the race, but it sure came close! 

The forces involved with a boat displacing over 28,500 pounds and moving through water at 17-18 knots are enormous.  With almost eleven hundred miles of open ocean sailing still ahead of us, we decided it was time to throttle back to protect crew and gear.  You can't do well in a sailboat race if you don't finish the race due to breakage.  We changed our sail plan down and are making solid progress, but without the adrenalin of the very high peak speeds. Make no mistake, we are still racing! 

We've run 220 nautical miles in the past twenty four hours.  That is our sixth day in a row with a run of over 200nm. 

We, along with our competitors, will soon need to make the transition from sailing around the North Pacific High to crossing the Trade Winds to reach Hawaii.  This segment of the race, and the vagaries of wind and weather it may present, are the remaining hurdles for us to reach the finish line and our families and friends in Lahaina. 

Regards,

Kinetic.

* If you would like to send a message to the crew on Kinetic, send your "text only" message to kinetic@kineticsailing.com.

View All Posts