Thursday Morning sees Fleet Merge and Diverge

The fourth day of the 2022 Pacific Cup sees two waves of starters that have merged into one. The entire fleet is navigating a very complex weather pattern defining the early stages of this race.

The fleet has now split into three main groups; the southerly fleet, the equally sized middle fleet, and a handful of boats that have hung it out closer to rhumb line up north. The northerly boats are likely attempting to thread the needle and sail through the light wind zone ahead of them, presumably to sail the fewest miles possible. On the contrary, the southern-most boats are gambling on sailing many extra miles to avoid a zone of light winds. The split between the ‘middle’ fleet and the ‘south’ fleet is currently growing, as many boats in the middle of the fleet seem to have steered up a bit to increase their apparent wind and boat speed, while the southerly boats have embraced putting kites up and trying to get down.

This race has become a navigator’s race; those who go ‘the right way’ are likely to do very well in this race.

(Christina and Justin Wolfe on the Orcas Island, WA based J/111 Raku are the quickest boat in the fleet and appear to be well positioned in this complicated 'Navigator's Race'.

Photo Will Burkhart Photography)

Christina and Justin Wolfe on the J/111 Raku continue to be the quickest boat in the fleet at nearly every tracker update with their speed seeming to hover between seven and nine knots. Making perhaps the most aggressive move to the south of the entire second wave of starters, Raku has largely followed in the wake of Bill and Melinda Erkelens on the Moore 24 Foamy, who owned the south in the first wave of starts. Appearing to set spinnakers and work downwind early, these boats appear to have gained an advantage. Any boats further to the north will likely struggle to ‘get down’ and join Foamy and Raku in what appears to be a much more ‘downwind’ Pac Cup than most years. Advantage: boats that dove south early, at least in this writer’s opinion.

[Note from PRO: As of this morning, it’s looking like Azure and CruzSea Baby may actually be making it OVER the top of the blob of light wind. Except for Vera Cruz farther back, nobody else is in position to make this move.]

Normally, the 2nd to 4th day of a Pacific Cup involve reaching with a spinnaker and a headsail up. Some of the best days of racing to Hawaii are in this stage, when the boat is lit up and pointed at the mark; gobbling up miles. This race doesn’t look like it will have that stage, as the fleet is forced to sail downwind early to skirt the oddly shaped high and will be gybing more than in a more typical Pacific Cup race. How this will impact the bowsprit boats vs. the spinnaker pole boats that can square back remains to be seen, but it looks good for the pole boats.

Shawn Ivie’s Express 37 Limitless is looking good in the North Sails division, again being far to the south of many of her rivals, including Express 37 sisterships Spindrift V and Perplexity. Losing navigator Sean Doyle to COVID just days before the race, the team shuffled crew around to fill the nav role and then took on a last-minute replacement to get their numbers back up to five for executing maneuvers. Despite the onboard changes, Limitless has routed themselves beautifully thus far and has consistently been a half-knot to a full knot quicker than the other two E37’s.

Lori Tewksbury and Catherine Meyer on the Express 27 Hang 20 appear to have already gybed and are currently pointed towards Mexico, sailing on a southeasterly course. While this may seem extreme, and it may be extreme, the women are taking a flyer and are making one of the toughest choices that any navigator will ever make; have the discipline and conviction to sail more miles than everyone, but gain that outside shot to simply route themselves into more pressure and sail around the outside of their rivals. Respect, Hang 20.

***Note to readers - As you may notice, we are not including any actual rankings and distance sailed or distance to finished statistics in these reports just yet. This is for a handful of reasons, namely being that when boats are sailing south and away from Hawaii, they inevitably drop to last on the YB rankings, when in reality they are likely to be leading. Conversely, whichever boat sticks closest to rhumb line will show up as leading the race, 10 times out of 10.  Pac Cup will begin posting our own rankings soon. The formula is being tweaked by the Principal Race Officer and the results tend to line up with reality much more closely than the YB rankings. Once boats ‘turn the corner’ and begin heading towards Hawaii, figuring out rankings and posting them becomes infinitely easier.

Race Committee and Media Team are headed back to the yacht club shortly to begin setting up so that we can start two more divisions today; the Goslings Rum division and the BMW of San Rafael division. Tune into our Facebook Live feed beginning at 12:30 pm PDT to see our coverage of today’s starts, and stay tuned to this website, the YB tracker, our Facebook and Instagram for more coverage.

Aloha

Ronnie Simpson

Pacific Cup Yacht Club