49.11N, 123.59W Wind 17 @ 270, Bar 1020, Cloud Cover 10 percent. Distance from Finish 2332NM.
For Transpac 2009 the Final Results are posted.
As the race has evolved over the last 100 years Transpac has struggled to find a way for a bunch of boats with very diverse speed potentials to all arrive in Hawaii around the same time. Of course the only way to make that happen is to stagger the start dates with the slower boats heading out first and the faster boats starting later resulting in finishes that occur over a a shorter span of days.
One problem with that is while elapsed times are adjusted for handicap boats on the course early sail in different weather than later starters.
The weather over the course between Southern California and Hawaii gets to be very reliable in the summer. I read somewhere that the Pacific High starts to get setup in it's normal position around the beginning of July. You can almost set your Oceanus Timepiece to it! It might be more clear to say don't start the race before July 1st because it is very likely the weather will not be here before then!
While later starters enjoyed ever improving conditions that made for less distance sailed and even record times for the big boats (rich guys can even buy the weather it appears) those among the first start, six days before the sleds, endured three very slow days in the first week at sea.
Based on the random nature of luck and reflecting their clean living our team headed out on the first start and the long slow route.
Narrow Escape hates light going worse than most ever other sailing design! And while they suffered greatly during that period (every sharp implement had to be hidden from Chuggy) your correspondent is advised that a new oversize 3DL main, which was kind of an afterthought, reduced the pain measurably.
Conditions in the last half of the race were everything the brochure advertises and memories of the previous calms were quickly forgotten.
After they got back into the wind they went to work on their handicap deficit. The restart that occurred out there meant they had about 2/3rds of the race course to make up all of their race time. I thought it was fairly impressive how they consistently pulled back ground (ocean I guess) lost.
In our collective experience, and not including 2001 where we did the short course (Catalina Race), in 2003 we went the wrong way but the winds on the right course were good. In 2009 the winds did not show up for a few days and they covered a lot of extra distance to get there. I can't help wondering how we, and that boat, might fair if our Transpac Stars ever aligned. 2011 anyone?
I like to say that their results don't tell the whole story. They were just a little behind still when the race track ran out that's all!
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