I will let Nathan, the skipper, do a real race writeup (we decided to stay offshore and NOT go through the islands as we feared that we wouldn't have enough wind there. Turned out not to be the case) -
I will talk about some of the differences between Coastal Cup and Pac Cup and the experience of the first night.
It's a much shorter race but it is much more tiring than the Pac Cup!
Much more technical sailing between wind/waves
Very boring getting there...no wind...
Kanehoe is a nicer destination than Avalon...
Much wetter than the Pac Cup
We had nicer food since we didn't have to plan for very long :-)
We had much more space (the liferaft could stay outside, we had hammocks, etc...)
Everything was nice and tight out of the way (with new padeyes to make that easier)
During the first night, we had a bit of fun...I didn't get proper food on my second watch. We had between 15 and 25 knots of wind then with gusts around 30+. It was a ton of fun. However
It was very wet. Waves came crashing on the boat, spraying us constantly. At some point, water came rushing in from the bow and the entire deck was awash (I couldn't see the deck!) - whenever I would go down, dripping wet, I'd be careful not to make the settees too wet. The sleeping bag was pretty wet/humid. Getting up and getting ready for a watch meant slipping into cold and wet foulies...lovely.
Because we were new to the watch system, my body didn't adjust until my second or third watch (would have been good to actually start this earlier in the day maybe, right after the tacking back and forth out of the Bay) - and I lacked food/sugar during the night. We didn't even do complete watches as things kept happening requiring all hands on deck since we didn't have an autopilot. The person on watch couldn't leave the helm to fix things up
- our spinnaker broke so we had to bring up another one on deck
- the twing came undone three times and at some point the sheet had manage to get stuck over the boom and was threatening to saw its way through the main sail. I tried jibing/releasing the pressure, etc...and it kept getting stuck. Had to wake up Nathan to try to sort this out
- we didn't rig the spinnaker net (BIG mistake), we had to undo a few wraps at times (especially in light air) - most of the times that did not require waking the other person up, we could drive our way out of a wrap (loads of practice doing this...)
- At some point, Nathan jibed but the main wouldn't go over. This was of course in the middle of the night, I was on the foredeck for the jibe. Couldn't see a thing and I tried to feel my way through lines to figure out what was wrong. The outhaul had wrapped itself around the lifeline which looked like it was about to be ripped off. I fumbled for my knife and I cut the line - after freeing up the guy which was also stuck in the middle (that was a line that was too valuable to cut loose by mistake just because it was dark)
- We woke up to jibe (we had to jibe at intervals that couldn't fit within a watch as opposed to the Pac Cup which was more friendly that way) - we did great jibing in heavy winds, no problem at all. Our jibes were much smoother than the Pac Cup's during squalls.
- Close to the end of the night, I was so tired and needed food/energy that I suffered three round ups in a row (Nathan was below). Once you start this way it's a death spiral as even though getting out of them is easy (you release the sheet, wait for the boat to straighten up again and then sheet in again) - it's disruptive and tire you even more.
- We spent the second day making sure that we could both get more sleep and recuperate. Our watch schedule was very errative. It depended on a lot on how we both felt. The goal as very clearly stated by Nathan was 'to be both in good shape for the 2nd night)
- The lines got really tangled as we were trying to sort them out to put up the second spinnaker and I must have tangled them even more as I was operating under autopilot ;-) Got one finger a little burned in the process. Despite my cold wet tight sailing gloves (which would not dry since it was overcast the whole way)
No panic, nothing big broke, we both kept a cool head but we both were very tired at the end of that night as none of us had a full watch's worth of sleep...
When I was semi-rested, it was just awesome. Surfing down 25-30 knots of wind. At some point I remember saying to Nathan to please move away from the instruments as I couldn't see the speed. His reply was 'no hunting for you!!!' I managed to get to 15.4 knots a few times, we were doing probably 11-23 knots average and I was barely under 10 for an entire watch. I think that Nathan topped that but I can't remember his record speed.
During the Pac Cup, I had reached 16.2 knots but we rarely had so much wind in such a sustained manner. That was sooooo sooooo nice. I wished it stayed that way. I think that I was really bored with no wind in the morning because I was spoiled with some great wind and great surfing for 1.5 days beforehand.
Just for that, it was well worth it.
