The message below was sent by Mike Cunningham this morning from JACQUELINE, a Freedom 30, who's racing to Kauai, Hawaii in the Singlehanded Sailing Society's TransPac race. He had some rudder concerns recently, but seems to have gotten them worked out and he's continuing on. You can follow him at this site, too: http://sfbaysss.org/shtp2016/
Hi all, the SFBaySSS SHTP adventure aboard jacqueline began on saturday 2 july.
Had a great sail out the golden gate and to the Farallon Islands but got stuck with some of my fellow racers in low wind conditions. A good chunk of the fleet made it through but i lost about 12 hours at this point. The importance of these hours is now showing up as we plod through low winds further offshore. Those that got past the farallons got out here sooner and were rewarded by better wind conditions. Hanging in there though, there are 1500 miles to go, much can happen.
Encountered typical nw winds once 100 miles offshore but things got hairy with 26 kts TWS and 8 to 10 foot seas with some breaking. The issue is you have to reach across this seaway and it places your beam in the way of breaking seas. I managed for awhile but learned an important lesson during the qualifier. Safe the boat and do not exhaust yourself. So i dropped the main at about sunset and spent the night forereaching on the jib while i buttoned up below and got some zzs. Lost a few more hours here.
By morning the wind had moderated to 20 kts tws and we got back on course.
Subsequent days have been moderate to light air and pretty frustrating overall. I had the rudder excitement as you are aware. That looks to be resolved by greasing the bearings. Thanks for everyone's thoughts on this issue. It is good to know team Freedom has my back.
By the way, the darn boom vang bale snapped in two the other night. I dealt with that by rigging a strap around the boom to hang the vang block on. Another benefit of the open footed main. If i have issues with main sheet bales i have a fix in my box of tricks.
Right now i am on my way to 134 west and will give you another update in a few days.
Mike
F30
Jacqueline