So 2014 will be focused on that event.
Elise is getting ready. There are three major projects that need to be completed prior to the qualifier so that it is as close to race conditions as possible and I can measure any deficiency, think of any improvement before race day.
And there is a fourth that needs to be completed prior to the race.
1) she still has a bit of electrical work that needs to be done mostly to make it easier to maintain during the race and to make it a lot more weather and failure proof before I go. She also needs two more solar panels. I am switching to flexible solar panels (she now has a big heavy 100W panel which I will keep as a backup if any of the other ones fail prior to the race but which is probably too heavy for a race and better for a cruise...)
Electricity will be key to performance as I want a working autopilot so that I can rest whenever I need to. Elise is like a stallion so surfing downwind might be something that I should drive through most of the time to remain competitive but I will still have to sleep :)
2) She will also get a brand new emergency rudder - she already has one from her Pac Cup day which works great, as we managed to sail the boat quite well with it for boat speeds in excess of 5 knots. It is a J24 rudder mountain on a super strong steel mount and with a huge backing plate. It is a race emergency rudder. But it is heavy. I am looking at a fiberglass option that would be much lighter (and I could remove the mount from the other rudder which would also be good weightwise) - and I will need to spend a little time testing it. I also got a Jordan Series drogue which could be deployed well, a little bit of it, as a steering mechanism. I'd like to avoid that though as a drogue slows you down!
3) Finally, more autopilot work. I will have V3 of Brian's autopilot, dubbed Doomsday Device, I will have Nick (NKE) and a spare tiller pilot (I might take a couple of those just in case). In order to help with steering in the event of autopilot failure - probably electrical failure I will
- for close-haul upwind sailing: take a bungee which actually does a great job upwind in heavy breeze where you can trim and balance out the sails. The boat barely deviates in a 45 min / 60 min timeframe - this I have already tested on a LongPac and could even sleep below with no problem - and in between it only takes a little adjustment. It is perfect for winds between 7 and 10 with a number 1 up and above 15 with a number 3 up, and above when you add reefing points and go down in size for the 4. Just so long as your boat is not overpowered basically. if I don't have an electrical failure but a regular AP failure and both Doomsday and NKE or out of service, then the tiller pilot should be able to steer quite nicely for any wind speed under 7 knots upwind and I can upgrade to the above for anything greater
- for reaching, broad reaching and loose upwind, I will use the storm jib method: (borrow from Andrew Evans' excellent book: http://sfbaysss.org/resource/doc/SinglehandedTipsThirdEdition.pdf)
I have tested this one - I had tested its bigger version with the mainsail instead of the storm jib but the exact same principle but I never managed to get the mainsail system to work on Elise. Might just be me but that storm jib one seems to work on the first pass with basically one added turning block and a piece of surgical tubing for the leeward side. That's about it. Nothing else was required and it really worked like a charm (assuming that the sails were also trimmed ok!)
- For dead downwind, I am thinking of a couple of J24 jibs stitched together with hanks and whisker poles which I could deploy as wing on wing - this is the typical method used by most trade wind cruisers as they just set this and sail downwind for two months.
Neither one of the method above would be very good with a spinnaker but when I am above deck I can certainly hoist one. I will also have that line run around the boat which allows me to make some course correction while at the bow. It isn't a great method of steering as in high performance at least not until I get more practice with it!!! but it a good 'oops, let me give this a jerk before I round up or down' type tool which helps quite a bit if you are leaving your kite up for a gybe, particularly when you have waves as the stern can get pushed around quite a bit in these conditions.
I could of course heave-to if all else fails and I just want some sleep to remain safe - Elise does heave to quite nicely with a jib and min up and if overpowered with a storm jib only but in a race that's not a way to go anywhere fast...at least, you'd be drifting mostly in the direction of Hawaii...but at 1 or 2 knots...So that's not my preferred way of sleeping.
All of the methods above take up space and weight. However, I am prioritizing the ability for the boat to keep moving in the direction it is supposed to as fast as it possibly can under the conditions no matter what, and even if I want to sleep.
Not sleeping seems to be the surest way to lose this race so I am taking measures to make sure that I can get plenty of sleep if I need it; and not at the expense of speed, or at least not too much.
The truth is that I will probably need to be hand steering more than most folks on heavy stable boats, particularly downwind although the Doomsday Device and the NKE with a high gain have done really well with their little gyro thingy. After a while, if I am too sleepy, it is likely that the AP will do a better job than I would! - and eating, etc...as well as a bunch of other pretty basic biological needs will have to be taken care of at some point!
4) Before the race, I will have Elise's rig taken down and every single bit of it thoroughly checked by a professional rigger. Of course, it is always possible for the mast to break and come down but the one reason I want to eliminate is bad maintenance. This will include every single halyard, sheaves, etc....I will have this done at least 2 or 3 months before the event because I want to test anything new that might have to be added after this check...although last time we did that, it didn't work too well as the forestay broke during Pac Cup about 3.5 months into a new rig...but hey! We can't eliminate every source of failure, just reduce the possibility of them.
Sailing is a very mechanical sport. No matter how good a sailor you are, breakage can happen that will not be the result of an error that you make - most breakages can be dealt with and won't really be race losing moves. A mast down, no matter how well you can jury rig something with whatever remains you have or pole; etc.. is likely to make you sail a lot slower though...So some breakages might be race losing moves.
Clearly if you have a light spinnaker up in 40 knot wind it might rip, if you overload your mast, particularly in an unbalanced way, it is more likely to break, if you round down, your pole might end up at a 90 degree angle - there will always be things that you do that might break things and this is why you want to learn to make repairs at sea. However, a mast that is corroded, cables that are worn out, sheaves that are rusted, lines that have chafed too much will also create these problems and can easily be remedied by simply making sure that everything is looked at and taken care of before you leave the dock.
A lot of the work I am having done by professional. Partly because I want to make sure it is well done and partly because I have very little time and the little time I have I want to spend it practicing on the boat and getting ready physically.
I am getting ready physically - I will continue to bike so that my level of fitness hits the max it can be when comes race day and my metabolism will be efficient. I also tend to sleep better out of sheer physical exhaustion which should help me fall asleep fast and recuperate fast when sailing. I will read up a lot about sleep management as this is likely to be the make or break victory move.
I am not entering this race to cruise to Hawaii. I am taking the event seriously and I want to give it all I have.
Finally, Elise and I are both getting ready. We already know each other quite well. I have sailed her in heavy conditions (nearly 50 knots of wind), in heavy waves, in unfriendly seas, in no wind (cf. Long Pac 2009), in the rain, in the sun, in fog. I have been seasick on her, I have been tired, I have been wet - I have been cold a couple of times. I know how to get every bit of sail up and down, I know how to recover from a bunch of crashes, including round ups and round downs - I have broken numerous poles until I figured out how to stop breaking them...that's when they took to just break on me.
I have refined my driving skills by sailing with a full crew and by focusing only on boat speed and feeling her groove. I have refined my shorthanded crewing skills by sailing double-handed or single-handed although I am still not very capable of gybing a kite single-handed in light air without having it collapse, my best gybes single handed have been in heavier air for some reason, perhaps because the spinnaker just floated when I messed things up and the boat was more stable? I am not the best trimmer at all but I am hoping to learn from Mark, a very fine trimmer that Elise is lucky to have on board when she races. I am used to sailing her short handed so I also know the difference between depowering her when there is weight on the rail and when there is not. I know where things are hiding on the boat and I know that she likes a light touch on the helm. I know her desire to jump downwind, I can feel her powering through upwind and her enthusiasm on a power reach. I am getting better at upwind sailing (there was a time when I had so much more practice at downwind sailing than my upwind boat speed was miserable compared to just flying with the spinnaker up, which runs a bit contrary to what most people are used to perhaps) so the first few days shouldn't set me back to the back of the fleet as certainly as would have been the case in years past.
I still have a lot to learn - I need to bond with her when I am tired. I need to rehearse disaster scenarios although I have been through a couple already and when well prepared they aren't really scary, mostly boring...and I know that besides electricity, my comm plan will be well above spec with redundancy, etc... so that no matter what happens I will be able to call for help within a few hours tops of the event.
I need to try to do many more things single handed, mostly around sleep management, prepping meals, and generally living aboard - understanding what I need to feel good alone at sea for many days.
Eric Tabarly had a thing: no matter what, he would take time to cook a good meal for dinner (and when he raced with a crew, he would cook for his crew). That was what anchored his day, gave it structure and kept him going. I wonder what my thing is.
I feel a mix of excitement, apprehension (can I make it to the start line??).
I am so blessed. Imagine being able to spend a couple of weeks doing what I enjoy the most, sailing offshore and with my beloved Elise? It will probably be the most challenging thing I will have ever done. I still so look forward to it.
And it looks like there will be at least one other Express!
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