Pegasus Racing, Coastal Cup 2003

The race committee verified that they haven’t heard from Pyewacket yet (we hope that they are all safe), and that Pegasus broke the course record by 6.5 hours! (the course record was held before that by Larry Ellison’s Sayonara and the Alan Andrews designed Medicine Man). That must have been one of the most epic…

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After a night of epic sailing with boat-speeds well in excess of 30 knots, as we approach Santa Catalina Island at Arrow Point the wind is very light. We went from holding on to our lives at 30 knots of boat speed with winds gusting to 40 at 315 degrees magnetic to 4 knots this…

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It was a wild, windy and wet night. Fast and furious. With the full moon, sailing was outstanding, but quite extreme. The kind of stuff that great memories are made of. With the full moon, the big waves looked like silver mountains with the glitter of snow and ice. That was quite a sight. Around…

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Pyewacket jibed and we jibed. But, now with the darkness and the big waves, we can’t see them anymore. Last we saw them, they were several miles behind. We’re both flying down the waves towards Point Conception. Point Conception, The Cape Horne of the West Coast is 60 nautical miles out and bearing 80 degrees…

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Fast driving at sunset. Very wet and wild. The wind is gusting to 37kts and the seas are huge. We exploded a kite, but were still doing 22kts with main and stay sail alone. Steered the boat for one hour and in these conditions that is about as long as you want to drive. We…

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The lead went back and forth for a while as Pyewacket put on a bigger kite than Pegasus. Then as we sailed over them and rolled them in a very tight with a good puff, they tried to match our angle and broached and got all tangled up for a while. That was our opportunity…

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Well as I was the navigator on this race I figured that we’d keep it simple and instead of using the 4 redundant laptops, we’d just use one. Normally these laptops are networked, but unfortunately I tried to simplify the system. So now we are without our navigation program, Deckman for Windows, because by accident…

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By 2 PM we had passed Pyewacket to Leeward, sailing lower and faster in general. I think that we anticipated the heading puffs better than they did, making small gains with each puff. Now the wind is up to 25+ knots and both boats are surfing the big North East Pacific waves seeing boat speeds…

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Shark is 13 and is now quite a Melges 24 and 29er skipper as well as a wind surfer. He’s old enough now to be a full member of the team. For a long time this afternoon we sailed with Dolphins. Its always magical to see team playing in our wake. The pass us, they…

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By 2 PM we had passed Pyewacket to Leeward, sailing lower and faster in general. I think that we anticipated the heading puffs better than they did, making small gains with each puff. Now the wind is up to 25+ knots and both boats are surfing the big North East Pacific waves seeing boat speeds…

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The start: At 9:55 the warning gun went off. Five minutes to the start. Pegasus circled around and played cat and mouse with Pyewacket. Well we had a perfect start to windward. But that didn’t matter because Pegasus was now the mouse and Pyewacket the cat: They started in much better current to our left.…

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We have a great team, but we have a new team. Four of our Transpac team members are racing across the Atlantic: Mark Rudiger our navigator, Mickey Joubert, Richard Clark and Juggy. We have great sailors on Pegasus 77 but I am no replacement for Mark Rudiger and with our competition Pyewacket having their full…

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Tomorrow in the morning we will be starting off Baker’s Beach in a dying ebb. Both boats will be racing to be first to the gradient wind which should not be too far offshore. The fog came in around 7 PM but then cleared out by midnight. We will have a full moon for the…

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The team and supporters at dinner in the Pacific Room at the St. Francis Yacht Club. The Sprint Sanyo 8100 camera-phone doesn’t have a flash, yet the picture is acceptable given the fact that the dining room has essentially no lighting and the group was large. I was surprised to actually have that “instant memory”…

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With a strong low pressure pushing in the Eastern Pacific Coastal Cup 2003 will be very windy and fast.