(San Francisco, CA)- The forty-six boats racing in the 17th edition of
the Pacific Cup that left from the San Francisco city front (off the St
Francis Yacht Club) at noon on Monday July 16, sailing under the famed
Golden Gate Bridge to Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii, had no idea they would be
treated to a dominant, epic performance and blast across the Pacific to
Hawaii. The 2,070nm race is always full of surprises. Winner overall was Andy Costello, skipper of J/125 DOUBLE TROUBLE, sailing simply a magnificent race and finishing second only boat-for-boat to a 60 footer in a finishing time of 7 days, 23:42:44! Wow, that's fast 10.8 knot average, even for any 41 footer made of carbon/foam/epoxy! In short, Andy and crew said they "simply sent it" down the Pacific swells as fast as they dared, often hitting low 20s continuously through the night with rain squalls battering them incessantly.
In an update from Michelle Slade (Sailblast.blogspot.com), she commented- The victory is particularly sweet for Costello as it’s his first-ever Pac Cup. He was stoked to reap the benefits of two+ years he’s put into optimizing his boat. Costello also hand-picked a crew with the right chemistry to get the job done - fast.
“We
sailed to Hawaii in under 8 days on a 40-footer,” Costello said,
“That’s pretty good! I know it’s an extremely fast time for the size
boat. It was really windy and the conditions were really suited for the
boat and of course Skip (McCormack) called a perfect navigational race.
We had five extremely good drivers - at night there was no horizon, no
moon and plenty of clouds so you’re not driving by sight - it’s all feel
and you had better know what you are doing. We didn’t have to slow
down; we just went as fast as we could possibly go during the night. We
were changing our drivers out every two hours so there was always
someone driving the boat at full capacity. It keeps the pace on. We got
to the point about 2-3 days before the end of the race where we felt
good enough that we could put it into a slower gear or we could have
probably finished the race 8-9 hours faster. But there was no need to
break anything or blow the boat up before we got here.”Costello said they had breeze in the lower 20s for most of the race, and for them, that was based on putting the boat in the right position on the course.
“I think a lot of the guys who stayed higher than us didn’t get as much breeze as we did because we dove south and because of that we were able to stay in the pressure and get around everybody. We sailed a lot more miles than everybody else but we still got here faster. It was awesome. Warrior is another J/125; we beat him by 250 miles - just shows that we’ve done everything to get the boat going like this. Trevor (Baylis) has designed the sails for the boat - the spinnaker is not like a normal sail - we really developed everything to make the boat faster and faster over the past few years. It’s a whole other level and I think we can win some more races with it.” The other two crew on board Double Trouble are Jody McCormack and Matt Noble.
On an update from the DT blog, "super-skiffy sailor" Skip McCormack checked in form the "skiffy-filled" J/125 DT at the pointy end of the fleet. Said Skippy, "It's Tuesday, July 24th 1800 hrs PST, wind 13-18 kts @ 200-205 with A5/spin staysail/full main all flying. It's now Day 6. This boat has been LIT UP. We have been pushing hard. The last two nights were spent "sending it" into complete darkness. There has been no visual reference what-so-ever until last night when we had stars to drive by for 30 minutes until we were engulfed by another big, black, horizon eating rain cloud.
No throttling back, keep pushing, pushing, pushing to get to the leverage point first in an attempt to remove options from our competitors. We have now gybed and are headed to Hawaii. Now we are officially allowed to talk about that first Mai Tai. No more of this unofficial talk.
So far, Jody has the boat speed record at 20.8. She is "killing it", having gained huge confidence in her driving skills.
Matt is silently dominating. One of the most under-spoken and over-capable people on an offshore program, he is always aware of the surroundings and looking for ways to push the boat harder.
Trevor is the secret weapon on this program. He knows every mode the boat has and how to gain every ounce of boat speed out of it. Not only have he and Andy spent hours racing and learning this boat, but he has had his hand in designing the sail plan which gives us many different options for different conditions.
Andy has glued us together. He loves this boat and has spent countless hours to keep it in fighting condition. He is doing really well on the helm, but we have to keep pushing him to get more time in because he just wants to go faster!!
I've switched my 6 hour on 6 hour off watch schedule so that for the last four nights of the race I'm on midnight to 6am. Doing so puts three people on deck during the hours of most wind from 11pm and 5am. We rotate drivers often and keep people fresh on trimming.
After our gybe, we spent a few hours cleaning the boat, sponging every nook that hid water while we were on starboard gybe. "Bleachy sprayed" (Jody's nickname for Clorox cleaner) the galley, head, bunks, nav station and floor boards. Worked on the instruments to get these damn Ockam's reading properly and it was off to the races. We had to do our third back down a few hours ago to remove a huge piece of fishing net that had lodged itself firmly around the keel.
We have decided to back off the step a little bit this afternoon/evening having gotten around the corner in a good position on the fleet. We have changed kites and going into low mode. We are a little underpowered in the lulls, but have plenty of power in the puffs. This setup will take us through this evening when the cloud activity generates bigger pressure and we can decide what we want to do tomorrow morning based on fleet position and weather conditions.
Thank you all for the great input. We love to hear from everyone and it's been a really fun race so far. We are keeping the hammer down but being conservative towards the finish. Router has us 744 miles to go, and finishing in about 2.5 days from now, Friday morning." It was an epic, extraordinary performance. Kudos to Andy, Trevor and team for a job well done. Read more about it on the Double Trouble blog- http://www.sailblogs.com/member/doubletroubleracing/
Meanwhile, the J/120 sailing in the double-handed division, JAMANI sailed by Sean & Jeff Mulvihill from Park City, Utah also sailed near the top of their division but faded in the end to finish 4th.
In Division B the J/35c BRAINWAVES skippered by Jim Brainard from Golden, Colorado had a good race (see their blog- http://ibrainwaves.blogspot.com) and pulled off a 3rd in division and 18th overall! Not bad for a J/Cruiser. Equally as exciting a performance for a "cruiser" was the J/42 TIKI J skippered by Kim Worsham of Portland, Oregon (http://www.sailblogs.com/member/tikij/ or http://www.tikij.com/) that finished just behind them in 4th in division and 19th overall in a time of 12 days 02:26:00. Sailing photo credits- Erik Simonson For more Pacific Cup sailing information
