Murphy's Law

Matt and I went to the store for all the perishables.  For whatever reason we decided to use the self checkout.  We scanned, bagged, scanned, bagged.  The scale kept getting annoyed and telling us we hadn't bagged something or there was an "unexpected item in the bagging area."  We had so many bags (we brought four HUGE tote bags plus needed to use the grocery stores bags) that we have to move bags off the scale, which of course caused the recorded voice to scold us.  The customer service girl standing there kept having to override the machine.  So we were finally down to one last item.  Our total was $298.10 and we weren't sure if the last thing would put us over $300.  Matt scanned it, the machine made the normal beep sound but the price didn't come up.  We asked the customer service girl to come over and see what was up and she said the machine was frozen up and we'd have to start over.  Matt and I looked at each other and our faces fell.  Matt said, nicely, "we have to start over, oh boy" and she looked at me, looked at Matt, looked at our bags and bags of food and said since she knew what total we were up to she'd just ring it up as miscellaneous and scan the last item.  THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU.

Ha ha, you probably thought that was the "Murphy's Law" story.  Not quite.  So when we got home I texted the boat owners and told them the story.  Kim responded with something along the lines of, "I've got a better story.  The forward water tank failed."  So the boat is supposed to have two 50 gal H2O tanks but the original owner replaced one with a huge battery bank.  He had the forward 24 gal holding tank repurposed (in the factory!) as a water tank and the forward head was plumbed to go overboard at all times.  A few months ago we had the head plumbed to the 24 gal tank to use it as a holding tank as J boats intended and had a custom 35 gal water tank built just aft of it.  This is the tank that "failed" today.  Kim was not clear on the details of what went wrong.  I got the impression it was catastrophic and not fixable.  Last time I talked to Kim she was on her way to get some big water jugs so we would still be able to take enough water.  We are REALLY glad this happened today and not after we left.  That could have been a race ender right there.  Tiki Blue has something similar happen on the race last year but I they were able to make it to Kaneohe Bay without having to use their emergency water.

I keep promising pictures; tomorrow is the day.  I will take a bunch after we get the perishables stowed.

Bon Voyage Party

Here is our club manager Carly with Tiki J crewmember Vince in the background. Vince's son Shem and one of Shem's friends provided entertainment.  I took a lot more pictures later when everone was there but they are all pretty dark so I won't post any today.

More Prep

I finally have SOME pictures, more to come.  Our Bon Voyage Party at our yacht club is tomorrow night so I will try to get some pictures of that, plus more of the boat.

The all important item being brought down!  You would not believe how much debate there was around how much TP we needed.  Come to find out Mr. "I only need four squares per poop" (love you man, :) YKWYA) relies on baby wipes for the rest of the job.  We have LOTS of baby wipes aboard!

We got a second spinnaker pole.  We are still working out how we are going to rig it but we are close!  We plan to do dual pole jibes.  Hopefully figuring out how to use the set-up won't be too difficult! 

We had to buy new cowls for the dorades after losing one on the Spinnaker Cup return. Aren't they pretty?

We also had to rerun the roller furling line so we could use the eyes and block it used to run through for our second foreguy for that second spinnaker pole.  We managed to find three of these at one local West Marine and we have two more on order, due in today. 

We had to finish installing the latching handles for the reefer lid.  They turned out pretty well.  The latching part JUST clears when we open and close the lid.

Last pictures for today show how we have some of our food stored.  The cupboard on the left has dinner and lunch food and the cupboard on the right (behind the oven mitt in the first photo) has breakfast food.  This space held the microwave, which we decided not to bring.  We gained a bit more space by sawing out the false bottom.  We then had to come up with something to go across the front to hold everything in.  I came across this eagle creek bag at the Container Store.  Not only does it hold things in the cupboard but we can also stick stuff in it.  So far it is the home to the lighters for the stove and the all important kitchen timer.

I am at the point now that I need to relax and not freak out that I need to go buy more food or clothes or ...whatever.  I need to trust in all the planning we have done and believe that WE WILL BE FINE.  We are going to have plenty of food., water, baby wipes, TP, sunscreen, ETC! 

Provisioning / reefer lid

We got most of the non-perishables down to the boat over the weekend.

and tonight we prepped two of our early dinners.  We made beef stroganoff and chicken enchiladas to "heat and eat" on the trip.  We are also taking a Stouffer's Lasagna and a stew from a crew member's wife for "heat and eat" dinners, then the rest of the trip we will prepare and cook the dinners while underway.

Also tonight we did most of the work for replacing the lifting handles on the reefer lid with latching handles.  These are "just in case" of a knock down or inversion, so the lid does not go flying. 

A Docking Story

This is off my usual Pac Cup topic but I was just sharing this with someone and thought you might enjoy this little anecdote:

Last Wednesday night we had just tied up our friend's trawler we'd taken out for a spin when a 42'+ sailboat was coming in two slips up, and coming in fast. It was just the skipper and one guy who was at the stern with the skipper. I ran over to grab the bow dock lines (there were none ready!!) and the skipper was NOT slowing down. I yelled* "REVERSE! REVERSE!" Skipper casually replied "I lost my reverse". The bow rode up on the dock and came out of the water a good two feet. Once we got the boat stopped the skipper said "oh I'm in the wrong slip". I won't go into the comedy of him and his one crew trying to use dock lines to leverage the boat back out of the wrong slip and make a U turn to back into the new one. Suffice it to say my husband and I took pity on them and helped them. Plus their correct slip it next to our friend's trawler to we wanted to look out for him!

*we have a "no yelling while docking" policy unless bodily harm, death, or severe property damage is imminent.  I was holding on to the guy's bow pulpit so I was somewhat concerned about bodily harm to myself but more that he was going to take out the dock or the dock box, or put a hole in his bow!

Since this story is out of context and not all my readers are boaters, I will explain a little about docking a boat.  Have you ever struggled to park you car in a narrow spot, where maybe the cars in the adjacent spots are really close to the lines?  That is what getting a boat into a slip with docks on each side is like.  You have maybe a foot of clearance on each side and you are trying to slot a 40+ foot (at least in our case) boat into it.  So not only is it like trying to get a car into a narrow spot but it is not just a matter of turning at the right angle to not hit the neighboring cars.  You have wind and current influencing the speed and direction of the boat AND you have no brakes.  The only thing you can do to slow down is shift into reverse, but doing so also changes the direction of the boat--oh I have to explain THAT to. 

Ok so in a car, you turn the steering wheel, it turns the wheels, the car turns.  In a boat, you turn the wheel, it turns the rudder and the rudder attempts to move the boat the way you turned the wheel BUT as I mentioned you also have the force of the wind and current.  There is another factor that comes into play in reverse and that is the force of the water that is being moved by the propeller.  The effect is called "prop walk" and it causes the boat to want to back up in a particular direction (based on which way the propeller spins) regardless of which way the rudder is turned.  You have to factor in prop walk into your planning for any maneuver that involves backing up. 

If you are not a boater you are probably now thoroughly confused.  So imagine again that you are trying to park in that really narrow parking space and you are driving a big SUV on a really windy day and you are being pushed by the wind into one of the cars next to as you try to turn in.  So you throw the car from forward into reverse to try to correct and instead your car starts going the opposite direction from where you want (but at least you slowed down) so you ask your spouse to hop out of the car and push you away from the car you are being blown into.  Can you imagine that you and your spouse might be a little tense and be inclined to yell?  Thus we have the no yelling rule.  Yelling really doesn't help, it just escalates the tension.  Unless someone is going to die!  Then you need to get the skipper's attention.

And as I learned so many years ago from Bryan Jones, my horse back riding instructor, "you can't steer if you aren't moving".  You can't solve this problem by coming in super slow and thinking you are going to be oh so careful and slide it in just right.  If you aren't moving forward, the boat is not going to respond when you turn the wheel and the wind and current are going to take over.  Even though most marinas are protected by a "breakwater" there is still wind and current inside the marina!  All in all docking can be quite exciting!

I hope this gives you a little taste of what this yachting stuff is like.  :)  It is not all sunsets and margaritas.

Making Progress!

We got a TON of Pac Cup prep done this weekend.  I took some pictures of the provisions but forgot to take the camera to the boat!  I hope to have a ton of pictures to upload tomorrow night.  We have all the non-perishables stowed, everything that we had to take off for the weighing organized and back on, a bunch of little niggling projects done and we are so close to being ready!  We have a few last minute things yet but we still have time AND we have some fresh recruits in town for the weekend festivities who can be put to work on some of the items! 

What is this ratings stuff?

 From Wikipedia:

The handicap number assigned to a class of yachts is based on the yacht's speed relative to a theoretical yacht with a rating of 0. A yacht's handicap, or rating, is the number of seconds per mile traveled that the theoretical yacht should be in front of or behind that yacht. Most boats have a positive PHRF rating, but some very fast boats have a negative PHRF rating. If Boat A has a PHRF rating of 15 and Boat B has a rating of 30 and they compete on a 1 mile course, Boat A should finish approximately 15 seconds in front of Boat B. Results are adjusted for handicap by the race committee after all competitors have finished.

The Pac Cup is a 2070 nautical mile course.  When our rating went from 88 to 63, we lost 25 seconds per mile.  So for the race that is 51750 seconds.  862.50 minutes.  14.375 hours.  More than half a day!  We did not think we could sail to that rating.  In other words, we did not think the boat was fast enough that we could afford to give that much time to our competitors and still be competitive.  With that rating we could expect to correct out (the finish order after the ratings corrections are applied) to last place.  We are not expecting to win the race but it is depressing to start a race knowing that you have no shot at doing well!  By having the boat weighed we got almost half of that time back--6.9 hours over the 2070 nm course.   That seems more realistic for the boat's performance and puts us on the "slower" end of the group we are starting with.  Considering how we have done against these boats in other races over the past year and a half, that is where we should be.  So we hope to be more competitive within our division and the fleet with our "correct" rating of 75.

There are two other boats in our division with the same rating.  Like Ay Caliente in the Ocean Races, we will know in real time how we are doing against these two boats.

12 days to go!