BOB posts: As Shanti’s official Transpac navigator, I was ready for the first big test, the two day race to Drake’s Bay and back. Unfortunately as the nav, I got us to the starting line 15 minutes after the last boat had started! Oh well. We knew we had the crew to get some of that time back and sure enough, a combination of animal cunning and blazing boat speed got us back up in the pack. We finished the first day in 2nd place corrected. But the Drake’s Bay race wasn’t really about whether we won or lost, it was a chance for Jon, Heather, Shana and I to have a great weekend “shaking” the boat out after the week of re-rigging Jon did in the boat-yaaaard (that was for Kevin).
A gorgeous day was spent passing boats on the way up the coast to a finish around 5:30 PM. On the way porpoises came over and swam under and around Shanti for at least half an hour. I’ve never seen them this close to the coast, so definately exciting and fun to watch.
We anchored behind a bluff just inside the point (as in Pt. Reyes). Windy as it could be, but we snugged in down below for some generous rations of beer, rum, wine and then a pretty “salty” bean and ham stew that hit the spot. At that point, it didn’t matter whether it was hot, cold or in between. We were very, very happy!
A very windy night, but getting up during the night to “check the anchor”, revealed a beautiful, foggy scene where the boats anchored around us had mast-heads light barely glowing though the fog like fireflies with phosphoresence glowing around the boat as the waves lapped against the hull.
Morning brought a pretty sigificant breeze and after a downwind start we set the chute and smoked down the coast. The anenometer hit the high 30’s a few times on the way and we had quite a ride until we wiped out down by the lightship (OK, Bob was driving, but I swear I don’t know what happened?), got a big twist in the spinny and took both parts of it down and switched to the jib. Still surfing all the way in, I’m pretty sure we hit 15 knots a few times, but the speedometer isn’t calibrated so we’ll never know.
All in all, a great weekend. Shanti is truely an awesome boat, we’re looking forward to this race more than ever and we’re getting really excited since it’s THREE WEEKS AND COUNTING to our start. I’m going to make sure we’re a bit earlier to the line than we were Saturday.