Kanehoe

We arrived last night (7PM local time) at Kanehoe, in one piece but down a forestay which broke on day 4. We had problems with the rig after that (mast pumping, etc...) so we couldn't race hard and lost about 2.5 days to this (and slowly climbed down from 2nd place to last in our division). Still a lot of fun and whenever we were able to put the kite up (all the time but 4 1/2 nights and 2 days) because of the rig issue, we had some great boat speed. We will post more later, we have a bit of rinsing and cleaning to do right now.

Quite disappointed to have the integrity of our rig compromised so early in the race and as Nathan put it, been relegated to the "cruising" division, it was still a ton of fun and just gives us a reason to do it again next time and this time, race for blood :)

After all, a long distance race is as much about how quickly and well you can recover from failures as about sailing fast on a fast course. This year, our failure was more than what the other boats experienced but we did fixed it, kept our kite up to the finish line, raced as hard as we could given the equipment we had. We didn't give up and never stopped sailing.

Just like life. Stuff hits you, like a cancer diagnosis, you are slowed down for a while, needs to deal with it, recover and sail fast again. Our broken forestay (for no apparent reason, the WIRE broke, on a rig installed 2-3 months before the race and shaken out on the Bay) was our little cancer diagnosis. We did some surgery, allowed for a short recovery period, incurred some limitations in how aggressive we could sail but we didn't let that get in the way of the fun experience of crossing the mighty Pacific Ocean.

So, quite fitting as we were racing for sarcoma patients. We were a good allegory of what their life might be. So, keep your mast up, your sails full and enjoy the wonderful ride that is life!!