Switching to LIVE at Plan B Central

No more 4 hours delayed from now on we will be running live and for the duration of the race.

But first the overnight stats:

0600PDT, 21.38N, 155.16W, Wind 045 @ 17 knots, Barometer 1017, Cloud Cover 50 percent, Sea 4-5 feet, Distance 24 hrs. 208, DTF 144.

What looks like an easy night for the crew onboard. While they may have covered considerably more ground than we know they converted all but 4 miles of the distance between the waypoints into distance down the course - which is high efficiency.

As noted below at 0830 Hawaii StanDart Time Plan B checked in 100 miles away from the finish at Diamond Head. They have estimated their finish time 10 hours later at 1830 for an anticipated average speed of 10 knots for those last last miles.

They will also check-in again when 25 miles out and one last time abeam of Koko Head (5 miles to go) .

The winds in the Molokai Channel are so reliable that we can schedule their arrival time with the accuracy that a German Railway would be proud of. The winds in the Channel are enhanced by the venturi effect in the passes between the islands. And because they have chosen an afternoon finish the winds will be further accelerated anabatically as the land is heated during the day.

As chance would have it, in 2003, we finished during the heat of the day also. Here are some remarks I put down in my journal after that finish:

Welcome to the Molokai Channel a sort of Mecca for sailors. Many famous sailing stories have been conceived right here. I am hoping we will not become one of them.

The final run into the finish off Diamond Head can be exciting at any time of day but if you are looking for that maximum adrenaline rush, big windup, grand finale, it is best to plan an afternoon finish when the normal, channel enhanced, Trades are further augmented by anabatic effects. I was secretly hoping for a midnight finish for just these reasons!

I have succeeded in prying the helm out of that Rascal’s hands and quickly discovered why “those Sissy’s” had in the mini reef, the first full reef and only the baby spinnaker up. The wind was hanging around 27 knots, the waves were short, steep and huge and the boat speed seems never to slip below 15. In these conditions we have about 30 degrees of steering range we can live in. The finish line is at the top end of that range!

If steering was not already tricky enough the wind continues to build and in order to get over to the finish line we are really hanging on the hairy edge. A couple of times we got “a little too close to the sun” and did what you might expect would be some Wide World of Sports Wipeouts but they were not so bad. We will later came to realize that we were sliding, exactly sideways, down the face of a wave that was itself traveling at 20 knots or so and that takes a lot of the apparent wind sting out of it.

The last ten miles deserves a separate paragraph and so here it is. Now I have sailed on a lot of boats over the years, planning dinghies and beach cats, but nothing can quite prepare you for going so fast in a big old keel-boat. By now we have loaded all the sails out of the bow into the back of the bus. That helps. All the fat bastards are behind the companionway hatch and that helps to. The wind is now in the low 30’s all the time and we will ultimately cover the last ten miles of this race in just over 40 minutes. You could have knocked my eyeballs off with a stick for each of those minutes. There were some huge long surfs, minutes at a time with the spinnaker just flying like a flag from the end of the pole. MacArthur suggested we might as well take it down since we were not using it anyway! And I still thank God - yes I found religion of a sort in the Molokai - that the big steep wave about 12 inches in front of and six feet above the bow kept moving as fast as us – most of the time. When it doesn’t our remedy (I’m not entirely sure it was completely our remedy or choice) was to load a 12 inch thick, heavy, layer of saltwater all over the deck until the boat slows down and drops back in behind that wave or often climbs over and charges down the next. You just kind of recklessly point the bow into that big hole in front of you and hang on – no really you hang on.

And then suddenly it’s over. Too suddenly. The wind speed drops by 15 knots the waves mostly disappear and there are para-sailors and jet-skis, VIP boats and helicopters and surfers all around.

I still remember being there like it was yesterday. And I am missing it badly today.

So anyway because the winds will likely increase quite a bit over the next 100 miles and I know Chuggy will want to "Go Like Hell" I would suggest that they will arrive between 30 and 60 minutes ahead of that schedule.

And it looks like they will be finishing in a flock of boats today too so the arrival parties will be raging at a fever pitch on the Ala Wai all night long.

Memo to Helen, Mrs Cutler and Mommy Deere please ditch those Surf Instructors and find your way over to the dock before then.

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