Below are a series of messages received from the Friction Loss crew. The oldest is at the top and proceeds chronlogically.

Sent: Wednesday, July 07, 2010 08:29 AM Pacific Standard Time

Subject: Pac cup.

News from Friction Loss.

We are at the morning of the third day after starting on Monday, and frankly this has to have been the slowest start of any of the eight Hawaii races I have been in. We started in 12 to 15 knots of breeze off the St. Francis Yacht club and beat out of the bay in company with the Wyline cat 30, J-35 and Cal 40. shortly outside the bay the wind eased up and backed to the south. In the next two hours we went from the No. 3 jib to the No.1, to the Jib top, the 1/2oz spinnaker, then back to the Jib top. It was quickly becoming obvious that this was not to be a Fun race to Hawaii! A monster swell from the northwest with heights up to maybe seven or eight feet or more, combined with a southerly wind, made for very trying and uncomfortable sailing. However dinner helped us along, Nona joans baked pasta dish was well recieved and morning roll call put us boat for boat ahead of our division. Day two dished up light and shifyt breeze from the south to south west. We spent all day switching from the Jib top to the staysail, which we are also using as the finger licker (windseeker!). This is not a good sign for a Hawaii race. Is this a really a Hawaii race? A quick check of the operators manual, confirms that yes this is a race to Hawaii. At least the swell has been subsiding, but the water surface is getting ominously glassy, good for water skiing maybe, not so much for speedy yacht racing.

Downloading a few more grib files via Satphone tells us what we already pretty much know. We care being swallowed by light high pressure zone stretching out from the mainland. Which reminds me to thank Richard and Jan for lending us their Satphone, so that we can continue to download the bad weather news! And n turn share it with you.

Dinner last night was Carribean Chicken with pasta, courtesy of a young private chef James Cabidan. It was fantastic. He has put together a six day menu for us as that is about the extent of our dry ice. WE looked forward to five more tasty meals before tucking into the freeze dried. YUM!

Our last 24 hour run was 53 miles. A serious Ouch. I'll leave the maths to you.

That is all for now and remember a warm bed that stays still trumps a bed moving at two knots. Elisa, Shawn requests a message to Lucille. To please put in a good word for breeze in her prayers.

All the best to all.

Friction Loss.
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Sent: Thursday, July 08, 2010 3:20 PM

We are still slow going here. Up in the front of the pack, but some of the boats behind are to the right and bringing pressure, albeit not that much. Still have a light southerly flow and trying to stay left so that we can keep a shorter distance to the mark in our favour. We will lose a little in the next two days to those behind us, but once into better running conditions we should fare well. Our main competition is Nancy, the Wylie Cat 30. They reportedly do better in reaching conditions, but the future holds better running conditions.

Food is good. Last night was braised pork with ginger citrus lime and potato. Excellent. Having a chef prep our early on meals was an awesome call. worth every penny. It is going to suck when we move into the freeze dried. Oh well.

Shawn tried to break the Lavac toilet last night, but appears to have it mended now. Will follow up later.

All for now and be nice to your toilet, they really do deserve better treatment!
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Sent Saturday 19 July

To Hitchhikers, Family and Friends,

Hi guys, well we are finally in decent breeze. From 0800 on 7-9-10 to 0800 this am we covered 160 nm. Last night was 15 to 17 and sailing with a reaching kite and full main. No moon and patchy clouds but early this am the clouds went away and we had beautiful star filled skies as a backdrop to the kite. I reckon we are hanging with our main competition, but await roll call at 1000 to see how we did. We have two fresh dinners left and then it is into freeze dried! Potential to finish on the 19th but dependent on breeze.

Now, Hitchhiker will not be entered in Santa Barbara to King Harbour. Sorry, but with PHRF champs the following weekend, it is all a bit much. I need to know who can make the PHRF hamps. August 7 and 8 in MDR. It will likely be three races saturday and two sunday. We will have a brand new light no 1 genny, so should be in top form. Please let Minda know. I am certain that the commodore is in.

All the best guys and will keep you posted on our progress.

Cheers,
Doug.
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This race ought to be re-named from the fun race to Hawai to the weird race to Hawaii. We spent most of yesterday and the night before reaching in fresh conditions with a full main and the reaching kite. Fun sailing and everyone getting into the rythmn of both night sailing with a kite and day sailing in sunshine. I came up on watch at 1700 and took the helm which was very heavy and loaded up. Shawn mentioned he had been struggling and maybe we ought to go to the jib top. After five minutes driving I agreed and so we made the change. Helm was still heavily loaded, so I suggested we reef, only to remember that Shawn had yanked the reefing line from the main reef clew in light air frustration a couple of days earlier! Bugger. Of course Murphy's law immediately came into effect and the breeze promptly built accompanied by low scudding clouds and a darkening bank on the horizon to our right. Down comes the jib top, head the boat up and wrestle to get the reefing line in. Success and we have a reefed main. Put up the number three jib and bear off in 22 to 25 knots of wind, big seas and fog! Spent all of last night reaching with the reefed main and jib, two people on deck and one off below. Basically very little sleep had as we were two hours up and one hour off. Everything is very damp. However, we did rip off a 176 mile run, which for a 32 year old 30 footer has to be considered pretty bloody good! Weather prog is for more of the same today sans fog. Come on sunshine.

Notes on reefing. If you run the reef line, don't pull it out until the main comes off.
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Sent: Monday, July 12, 2010 5:36 AM
Subject: Pac cup update.


Day seven with 1224 NM to go. Last night was our last freshly prepared meal. We hired a private chef who put together an awesome menu for six nights, we figured that was about as long as we could make the food last with dry ice, and we were pretty much dead on. From here on in it is freeze dried and boil in the bag indian food. Peanut butter and honey sandwiches for lunch. I don't like peanut butter but just became a fan!

Yesterday's run was 189 and we took 1.81 miles from Green Buffalo. Fancy Nancy though is pretty much out of reach. Unfortunately fatigue got the better of us in the late hours and we had four hours of very slow going. Sleep management is essential. Currently sailing with the heavy runner up and making decent speeds in about 18 to 20 true.

All for now, off to bed.

P.S. I have never smelled this bad, my foulies are worn out and leaking after three transpacs ( plus two deliveries), five cabo races, to PV and Manzanillo races, plus goodness knows what else, and the inside of the boat more closely resembles a swamp than an interior. Yacht racing is the best!

Doug.
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Day 8 and we finally hit the halfway mark! Good god that was a long time. Had a small halfway celebration of Tuna Salad on crackers and peanut butter Sarnies (sammies for you seppos). We know how to party! Oddly enough we are in company with another J-boat, the J-120 Jamani. Always fun to see another boat out here.

Yesterday was a great day. Everything is coming together now and we had our first full day with a kite up. Last night was epic sailing in 20 to 24 knots of wind and regularly hitting 10's, 11's and 12's with a high of 14.7. Watch system works well allowing three hours on and driving in 30 minute stints with 1.5 hours off. In the daytime, we revert back to 4 on 4 off to get rest. The end result is that we took 13 miles out of Fancy Nancy yesterday and now look to do some more damage today. Boat and crew holding up well so far. More news tomorrow.

Cheers
Doug.

Checked the tracker and it looks like they have slipped to fourth based on distance to finish (uncorrected). Great race so far though; very inspiring to me and my crew.

Actually - based on the 13 July report, they gained about 10 hours out of 19 hours from the 12 July report on the expected finish time behind the lead boat in their class. Friction Loss moved up from 3rd place to 2nd place in its class over the past day.

Day 9. W are in the tradewinds now. Big puffy clouds and steady breeze in the high teens and low twenties accompanied by frequent squalls are now the norm. We have 834 nm to go and are still in 2nd place. Last night we had some excellent sailing with one squall giving us up to 27 knots true for about ten minutes or so. Speeds were solid 12's with a high of 15. The new 2S spinnaker is so bright that at night it glows white, sort of like Casper the Friendly ghost! Almost thought about putting sunglasses on to drive while it was up.

We put in a couple of gybes yesterday to get a little more left and toward Nancy. I think they may have to gybe to finish which will help us shave some miles. Right now we are straight-lining toward the finish and we know we have a speed edge on them in the deep running stuff. So hope to make up some significant time in the final five days. Our projected finish time is......no, not even going to go there. You guys can see it on the website and keep it to yourselves please!

Cheers all,
Doug Johnstone

Day 11.

We are still here! Still on port gybe heading 216 avg and holding position with our fleet I have stopped tracing the back markers and now only focus on Nancy, Green Buffalo (CAl 40) Brainwaves (J-35c) and Mega Hurts (Laser 28). Yesterday we made great gains on Nancy taking out 15 miles and reducing their lead to 16. Better still is the fact that we are converging and that gives us the inside advantage at the moment.

Green Buffalo has also been making great gains and leads us all boat for boat with 663 to go. We are some 33 miles to go further back but making similar if not better corrected distance made good.

Tradewinds remain steady and sea state allows for some decent surfing. Typical of tradewind conditions, it is lighter during the day than at night. Frankly, though, the night surfing is more exciting and made even more so by lack of a moon.

Freeze dried food is the norm now along with the ubiquitos peanut butter sarnies. Although I did remember that we had a dried salami and had a salami sandwich for lunch. Very nice indeed.

More tomorrow.

Doug Johnstone
Friction Loss

Squall Day. Apparently we are on squall duty today, as we have had no fewer than five good squalls since early this am. They can travel in gangs of four or five, but usually only set one at you at a time, while the others go looking for other victims. Some are small and easily dealt with as they only blow 22 knots or so. They all move left to right and the small ones can be dodged, which can be useful as they may end up being suck squalls instead of blow squalls. Suck squalls are particularly malicious, as they come up on you all friendly like, then suck all the wind away leaving you bobbing around in very light air and nasty chop. We got mugged by one of these very early in the morning and spent an hour trying to get out.

On the other hand are the big solo squalls, these are very definitely blow hards and often carry rain with them as well. They can be up to a mile across and they do double duty as bouncers at all of the most popular thunder and lightning night clubs. We had run-ins with two of these today. The first around 0700 came across our course and we thought we could cross it by looking inconspicuous. It saw us and changed course to have a little fun. After some light rain and shifty breezes in the high teens and low twenties, it let loose with sustained puffs up to 28 knots for about forty minutes or so. Friction Loss dealt with it well and routinely surfed at up to 16 plus before the squall got bored with us and moved on. Clearly we were not be trifled with. Later at about 1400 or so, a big old squall loomed over the horizon with buckets of rain. It used the old dying wind ploy to catch us, but we knew what it was up to and moved to the flank to enjoy an hour or so of mid twenties and good surfing. This clearly irritated the squall and so it moved on at about twenty knots, muttering something about little layabouts not respecting their elders. Oh well.

We lost 3 miles to our foe Nancy. They seem to have the edge on us in the lighter stuff and we have the edge in the heavier stuff. They are 19 miles dead ahead now. Three and half days to try and catch them. The weather gribs don't show any promise of anything much over 20 knots or so, but the high is starting to move a little south, so maybe some isoar compression will happen. Keep your fingers crossed.

Cheers,
Doug Johnstone,
Friction Loss

The official Friction Loss 2nd place in class finish occurred at 07/19/2010 - 00:01. This is 46 minutes after Nancy finished - a horse race to the end!
Look here for official finish times

Here's a photo of the crew upon arrival


BZ Friction Loss!

Congratulations and thanks for the great postings... Very inspiring!

There is a good post race summary on the Friction Loss Blog that I've posted below.

What worked, what didn't

The boat was well-prepped from the point of view that we took everything off and got it back together the way it was, only stronger and more water-tight. We made very few changes to the stock setup, which was alright, but could have been improved.

We were as aggressive as we could be with the boat weight. We did our best to meet the exact letter of the rules in the most efficient way possible- using a lightweight emergency rudder from Phil's Foils, a mostly carbon cassette for it, a carbon emergency tiller adapter that allowed the same tiller to be used for both the primary and emergency rudder, etc. We had to splice on 15 and 50 feet of line to our existing anchor rodes, which seemed quite silly. We brought a few extra gallons of fresh water beyond the requirement, since the start had become a light-air forecast and we had freeze-dried food for the final days which would need water added. We ended up showering with and dumping almost ten gallons of water three days from the finish after assuring ourselves we had plenty to last to the end. Our biggest indulgence weight wise was probably the food, and having an installed head (no tank) instead of the race minimum "bucket with fitted seat".

Basic changes we did make were to install a double-ended-style traveler line instead of the old windward sheeting catastrophe, and we added a double-ended vang control, lead back to the back of the cabin top. We were able to blow the vang"rip-chord" quite easily, and did so on at least three occasions. We ran the afterguys to the secondaries on the cabin top, the only downside there was that we had the old horn cleats there- adjustments were thus slow, and required a second body to assist.

We generally cross sheeted the spinsheet across the primaries, using the leeward primary as a fairlead. The line between the primaries became the "banjo", so the helm could take up slack as the sail collapsed. The clam cleat on the high side primary allowed the driver to blow that "rip-chord" as well, during round-ups. The other deviation from "standard" in the sailing department was the use of Forespar's trigger ends on the pole, which made jibing almost always a lot faster using the "fishing" method of snaring the new guy in the open jaw. We made up a spinnaker net in time for the second night of running conditions, and let's just say that all the headstay wraps happened on the first night.

So either we got lots better, or the net worked. We did all but the windiest douses into the forward hatch, bald, and re-hoisted the new kite from the same place. I kept the next spinnaker up and down range cued-up in the hatch, with all three corners tied to short bits of string hanging from the hatch hinge. We got some minor twisting caused mostly by hoisting bald as the wind wanted to rotate the exposed tack corner. Nothing a little tugging wouldn't snap out, though.

As part of the refit of the boat, we sanded and had the boat repainted, and one change was to redo the non-skid with Kiwi-Grip. It's a neat product, but I found it to be a little slippery when wet, and it shredded knuckles or knees when dry- sort of the worst of both worlds. I was a bit surprised by this- I had read such good reviews of the stuff everywhere I had looked, and it looks and feels like it should work better. I want to add more to the foredeck to improve traction there, and maybe the side-decks as well. I can deal with the abraded skin as long as the stuff keeps me from sliding off the boat.

The new rudder was a dream compared to the stock plank. Phil's Foils built it using the same rectangular plan form, just shifted it forward about 2" to provide a little "balance". And they used a more modern foil section, made it lighter, and after fairing, it had about a 2mm trailing edge. Never a vibration or hum, never felt the rudder stall or give up (the times we lost it were due to reacting too late, or the rudder simply having nothing to grab as we lifted the back end over a wave).



Down below, we used a butane single-burner stove, on a gimbal setup from Origo, and used about a half-dozen fuel bottles. Only downside to this setup is the space it took up, leaving very little galley space for prep and clean up. The salt-water foot pump to the galley sink was crucial to keeping things easy to clean- never had to go get water with a bucket which gets old quickly. We used two big Coleman coolers on the salon sole for our frozen meal storage, packing sails all around them for additional insulation. With ten pounds of dry ice in each one, the food stayed frozen through the 5th day, and we ate the sixth meal after it had been just thawed for a day, no problem. We used food prepared by a personal chef for the first six days of dinners, and he did an absolute knock-out job. The next two days were Trader Joes pre-made indian food meals that didn't require refrigeration- they were surprisingly good. Then on to the freeze-dried stuff, which wasn't half as bad as folks made it out to be, in my opinion. Our only lacking, partly self-inflicted, was running out of sweets and snacks. We should have bought a little more, and been more disciplined about eating the fresh stuff early to save the sweet/snacks for later on.



We made the decision early on to sleep in the main salon so the nav and galley areas wouldn't be fettered by a sleeping body in the quarterberths. So we made a pipe berth for the starboard side (thinking this was supposed to a starboard tack/jibe race for 90% of the way, almost exactly opposite this time). That worked well when we used it, and later in the race it became a crew-gear shelf while we slept in the lower cushions. Again, thinking we'd be on starboard most of the way, we outfitted only the starboard lower cushion with a lee cloth. Sorry to Doug for the time he got rolled out of the port bunk onto the sails (luckily) on the floor.

Shawn replaced the head with a Lavac that he had to import from England. It's a really great head, when properly installed. One of the valves got put in incorrectly and the thing had to be rebuilt twice in the first three days until we figured out the problem. Not fun, but thereafter flawless.

Before the race, Shawn spent a bunch of time on the engine, replacing motor mounts, all external stuff like water pump and belts/hoses, and upgrading the alternator to an 80-amp Balmar unit with external 4-step regulator. We were learning about it as we raced, but it worked well. The three-battery, two-bank set of Optima batteries worked well, requiring us to charge generally just once per day for a little less than an hour. We installed a Xantrex battery monitor, which we were also learning along the way, but it appeared to work well.



We didn't spend any time (a big mistake) running the instruments with the nav software. Turned out the combination of vintage and current Nexus instruments and transducers couldn't be unraveled by Expedition, and we didn't get a chance to try Nexus' own software. We had decent info to display, but some instruments just couldn't be calibrated close
enough to be used. We absolutely should have mounted a few displays on the mast- even our best drivers went "googly-eyed" after a session of night driving with the bulkhead mounted displays. Other night-sailing improvements would have been better shielding of the light from the masthead tri-color. It was so bright that it also hurt drivers eyes at night. We also should have fabbed some kind of shield for the nav area so the laptop screen didn't blind the driver.

We left SF with the idea of using the "tried and true" watch system of 4-on 4-off during the day, 3-on and 3-off during the night, staggered two hours such that each driver would be alone on deck for two hours once in the day, and one hour once in the night. Nope, didn't work at all. After a couple of tweaks that lead to some bad outcomes and some hard feelings, we revamped the schedule entirely. What worked in the end was rolling three-hour shifts in the day, still staggered two hours so that we each got an hour solo on deck, but then at night when driving was toughest and the wind was strongest, we used 3 hours on and 1.5 hours off. We rotated drivers every thirty minutes (see "googly-eyed" comment above), and kept two bodies on deck all through the night. This was quite tough, but it worked and we felt like we were keeping the boat rolling at near 100% this way.

Our biggest downfall was in the sailing department. We just spent too much time working on the boat, not enough time sailing it in race conditions. We had done lots of buoy and overnight racing- Shawn has owned it for something like 15 years- but we upgraded and changed a lot of things in the last few years that should have been better tested, at night especially. And I could certainly have used more no-light helm time- I struggled with downwind sailing in no-light, overcast, windy, lumpy-sea conditions. Doug excelled in them, Shawn figured it out quickly, I just seemed to beat my head against the wall. I finally resorted to the brute-force inelegant method of staring up at the kite luff and windex and steering to just those inputs. My neck was not happy. I got simply lost when trying to feel the boat and use the instrument compass or wind angle display. I'll let others speak to the other difficulties we had, but I think we all brought a little baggage to the table that could have been somewhat sorted with some night sailing time together in breeze. Coulda, woulda, shoulda...

Sails. We brought a good-shape, couple year old main that had been toughened a little by the sailmaker. We never had before, and didn't pad the spreader tips for the race, and punctured the sail with them. Ooops. Two trips up the mast to add some duct tape wraps and patches, and the sail survived. We also broke a top batten at the mast-end holder, but it stayed in the sleeve, mostly. The main was almost always quite ugly, draped over the shrouds, shape just wasn't possible. Also in the inventory was a new jib top in cross-cut dacron which worked well, a new narrow-shouldered S3 reaching kite which was great, a new Airex900 S4 kite which we hoisted but decided was just too heavy, and a new Airex600 S2 kite that we used up to about 28 knots of breeze. The cloth was very stiff, and it would collapse and re-fill with a boat-shaking bang. We also had an old soft nylon smaller "chicken kite" that we used as our training wheels on the first night of downwind sailing. Other sails on board were the AP#1 genoa, a #3 jib, required storm sails (trysail and storm jib), a half-ounce kite, and a new free-flying high-cut staysail. The staysail worked great as a windseeker, but never seemed to do anything worthwhile as a staysail when the kite was up. Maybe if we had a tack point further out along the rail- we tried the mooring cleat and the aft-pulpit base. It just sucked the kite into it's lee and made the kite very hard to drive to.

The boat. Overall, I was simply amazed at what a J30 could do. We had one almost 200nm 24 hour run in reaching conditions, and several over 180nm runs in running conditions. The boat was easy to drive reaching and running up to about 27 knots, and above that we let Doug drive and he had the thing absolutely scooting. We didn't trust our speed instruments much, but we each pegged the fun meter over 14 knots, and Doug had Friction Loss surf down a wave and continue on a plane such that we caught, climbed, and PASSED an 8'+ swell ahead. The boat raises her bow, throws out a huge bow wave, and just scoots when you add swell and breeze together. We started using 8 knots of boatspeed as our target, feeling slow when this couldn't be achieved. Funny, in less than 18 knots breeze, the waves would shake the wind out of the sails as happens inshore in around 6 knots breeze. It's a different world, in the big swells and soft air of the tropics.

In closing, I'd like to offer thanks to Shawn for asking me onto his boat for this trip, and putting the effort into getting the boat ready-no small feat for a guy that works for a living; and to Doug for lending us his skills and experience and steady assurance that we and the boat could keep pressing, ever harder.
-C

(note pics were taken after a beer can race, just illustrating some of the points...)

Video posted on Sailing Anarchy today:



Good job guys!