Kinetic Vic-Maui Report 07-12

Kinetic friends:

We've done eight consecutive two hundred mile days and we are less than five hundred miles from the finish line. 

But, it ain't over 'til it's over ... we have to pass through an area with much lighter winds ahead of us.  All distance races seem to feature at least some light air, which in many ways is as hard as the breezy conditions.  The boat slows down and rolls uncomfortably in leftover waves, the sails flog and the crew's nerves get frayed.  Most of all, the nerves get frayed. 

We are pumping ourselves up for this challenge by reminding ourselves that we normally sail in Vancouver, where light air sailing is the norm for most of the year.  No big deal, right?  Should be able to do it in our sleep.  (We are so tired, we just might!)  Still, the idea of three days of light air nail biting to eke through to the finish seems daunting. 

Kinetic's heart is it's crew.  For this race, we have a team of nine people on board, five adults and four teenagers.  These are Greg Westerlund, Adam Thomson, Peter Moes and his son Sebastian, Bill May and his son Gordon, David Sutcliffe and his two sons Graeme and Jeff.  All are amateur sailors, counting many local, Southern Straits, Swiftsure, Van Isle 360, Vic-Maui and Sydney Hobart races among their collective experiences.  For each of the four teenagers, this is their first major ocean race.  The race's motto is Challenge - Adventure - Teamwork; Kinetic's variation on that theme for this race might well be Challenge - Adventure - Teenwork.  Or at least so it seems when they have to crawl out of their bunks at two a.m. to stand a four hour night watch!  Anyway, all are doing very well and the dynamic onboard is both fun and focused.  The younger crew are soaking up the experience and the more seasoned crew often sport an arched eyebrow and an ever so subtle knowing smile.  We've already swapped a thousand bad jokes, eaten our way through a mountain of provisions and gained memories sure to last a lifetime.  Even with enough fresh water available for showers, fresh-smelling clothes are in short supply, the sun is near-tropical, the cabin is both hot and humid and we still have five hundred miles to go ...

Kinetic's nerve centre is it's nav station, where a profusion of instrumentation, communications and computing equipment connect Kinetic with the outside world and where the boat's past performance and future courses are monitored and planned.  The hub for these systems is a Panasonic CF-30 Toughbook.  This impossibly reliable computer runs a tactical navigation software application, remote email software and other applications.  The Toughbook features a serial port which is connected to Kinetic's network of performance monitoring instruments.  It also features a PC Card slot which carries a dual serial port adaptor, with one port connected to a satellite telephone and the other to a packet radio modem and long range SSB radio transceiver.  USB ports are used for other connections including cameras and video.  The Toughbook's screen is dimmed in night mode, used to preserve crew's night vision, and has a touch capability.  In bouncy, rolling conditions, we often prefer the keyboard, which has a membrane to protect it from spills and spray, occurrences that are not infrequent on a wet, moving boat.  The hard drive is shock mounted, and user removable, both very useful features.  Kinetic used a CF-29 Toughbook for six years and about thirty thousand miles, without any failures at all, an extraordinary record for a notebook computer subject to shock, humidity, salt water and other hazards.  This computer is still in service.

Meanwhile, somewhere in the vast ocean ahead sails The Terrible, as our crew have dubbed our closest competitor in a spirit of friendly rivalry.  This is the final sprint to the finish, wind willing. 

Goin' to Maui!

Kinetic out.

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