All boats have checked in and are doing well.

Latest reports.

Mountain, is loving life.

Northern Star, All good aboard, Jame alive and in good health. Morale high.

Aloha, As you all may have noticed last night was a pretty big turning point in the race for most if not all of us out here.  I began the evening firmly on port tack with the code zero up. through the night several times the southerly wind attempted to die and give way to the synoptic northerly, for me this happened at i believe around 1 am PST when I slowly headed more and more south before committing a gybe to starboard tack that was taking me north at a heading of around 300. Not much later the wind went forward and i was able to continue on a course of about 250 as the wind slowly began to build. During the night after the transition, I was very happy to have popped my head out and noticed some stars attempting to poke through the wet marine layer which had soaked the boat with a light drizzle for a few hours before the sun came up. At day break, the clouds persisted but were beginning to show signs far off on the horizon. Not long after, i made the decision to change headsails to the A5 spinnaker which is the smallest I have onboard. Though winds were not too high at the time, they were forecasted to increase as the day went on and this spinnaker would provide me the best opportunity to make good progress in the direction I want to sail without getting pushed too low. With morning winds in the low to mid teens and the sun making an appearance in a blue sky, I was able to put together a few good hours of boat speed with the waves lining up well with my course and surfing waves from a steady 8 knots u to about 12.5. Noon time brought some lightening winds which although frustrating at times certainly could have been worse and as we ease into the third evening underway the winds from this morning seem to have returned. Not present however is the agreeable sea state that had allowed for surfing before, but now I am seeing a bit of a swell well forward of the beam making for a somewhat bumpy ocean.  Once again, the sun is unfortunately long gone, but the temperature seems to have gotten maybe a little warmer since yesterday and the night before so that a small gain. Tomorrow will likely see the beginnings of the freeze dried selections as I intend to finish up the last slice of pizza for dinner this evening. For those curious, I haven’t seen any whales since the first afternoon which has been somewhat pleasant as they gave me quite a few scares early on. I have seen a few jelly fish and a sun fish today along with a couple balls of discarded mooring or fishing lines.

Green Buffalo

06/19/2021. 18:00
The brisk breeze at the start carried well offshore… most of the way to the lightship.
Doing my best to stay on the south side of the course and fleet… where “maybe” the light air is “narrowest”.

A wee bit past the Farallones as I write this.
There were a LOT of fishing boats around the rocks… a bit of weaving to avoid getting to close to them… and only some of them some of them show on AIS.
Passed about 3 miles south of the rocks…

Wind now 7k (changed from #3 to #1 just past the lightship)…

Wind oscillating from 185mag to 210mag. Hard to sleep when the wind has the big oscillations every 10-20 minutes.

Ate Mary’s Peunut Butter & Honey sandwiches… mmm mmm good!

Anyone catch my needing to raise the main 3 times before the start? A long story… I had to raise the main 3 times just before the 2012 start too.
A story for Tree.

Cheers,
Jim
Green Buffalo

Northern Star. manual daily check in. Northern Star in good condition; Jamie alive, healthy, and in great spirits. Many thanks for the great start and sendoff yesterday.

Sea Wisdom
William Lee is at Pacific Ocean, Public

Day 1, June 19, “You got a spare?”
The first day was full excitement. Many thanks to my family and friends sending me off from StFYC to the Golden Gate Bridge. It was blowing 20-25 knots at the starting line. I put on a reef and and started my race. The initial passage was a wet one. I had water coming in through the closed hatches. I decided to head west and aiming to pass Farallon on starboard. Along the way, a whale came up and took a deep breath. I could feel the vibration from her spout. Just when I get to enjoy the ocean at the Farallon. I noticed on the current gauge that something was drawing 6 amps when I was not using any electricity. I shut down the breaker and saw that bilge light was on. But the bilge pump was not pumping any water. The bilge pump was relatively new. Good thing that I carried the old bilge pump as a spare. There is no way I would want to keep sailing if there is no electric bilge pump. Changing the bilge pump at sea at the Farallon was not an easy task because I haven’t gotten my sea legs yet. The pump was buried deep in the boat that I had to do some acrobatic move to replace it. The whole ordeal took 3 hours to fix. Lesson learned here is that there is never too many spares. Once I passed Farallon, I kept sailing on the same closed haul port tack on a WSW direction. The wind is light, 8 to 13 knots from the SSW. I’m hoping I can get to the NW synoptic wind soon, may be Sunday night? I haven’t had anything to eat for 24 hours, I’ve been drinking water. Through out the first night, I saw about 5 commerical ships. So there wasn’t much sleep either. I set my alarm every hour to 2 hours.

Today is Father’s Day. Best wishes to all the dads out there.

Sea Wisdom
06/20/2021 18:32
Dear SHTP RC,
Confirming receipt of position report. I’m doing well. Slowly getting adjusted to life aboard. You probably have seen my log on replacing a burnout bilge pump south of the Farallon. Seems like I’m the southern most boat. Everyone else are up north and further west than me. I hope I’m making the right decision, LOL!
Thank you

Aloha, Day 1
As many of you have maybe read or seen by now, the bay area delivered on its typical summer days of wind cold and some fog. Though i did cross the line well, my pre start decision making was clearly clouded by the lightening forecast as i held off putting a reef in the main as i believe ever other boat had done. after getting walloped by the express and the j109 long before even reaching the golden gate, I finally threw in a reef and was off to the races as it were. Being an early ULDB, Aloha does not excel beating to windward in big breeze and chop, a fact that is made substantially worse with the subtraction of any weight at all from the rail, because of this I was probably one of very few in the fleet to feel a sense of relief as the wind eased up and the reefs came out not too far past Point Bonita. The cloudy overcast bay tried to clear in spots as we eased on towards the Farallons, but unfortunately I haven’t really seen the sun break through as of yet and I get the feeling that trend may persist for quite a few more miles.  As the evening set upon the fleet, the wind backed off even more giving me the opportunity for the first headsail change of the race to the code zero, sadly shifty winds and large swells made this sail difficult to keep pulling through the night so it was back with the jib just before it got dark. The thick cloud cover of the day brought in a cold dark night with just a small glimmer of the moon glowing through, at times the light winds nearly shut off completely making a bad sleep situation even worse as sails needed near constant attention and courses needed changing to keep up with the shifting winds. Speaking of shifting winds, the southerly surge that we sailed into at the beginning of the race is still here for all of us I believe as we continue on port tack in a mostly westerly direction. Most recent models that I  retrieved this morning indicate this should let up by mid afternoon and we might be transitioning into a strong synoptic flow by late this evening at which point it might slowly begin like were actually sailing towards Hawaii. Until then I’ll continue trying to get as much rest as possible before the next few days ahead of windy reaching.

AND THEY’RE OFF!!
THOSE INTREPID BUGLIGHTERS, DRAWN TO THE SEA.
ALL DIVISIONS HAD CLEAN STARTS AND ENJOYED THE COMPANY OF A FEW ESCORT BOATS TO SEE THEM OFF. SAIL WELL FRIENDS!
ALL RACERS HAVE CLEARED THE FARALLONE ISLANDS.
WORKING THEIR WAY INTO SOUTH WESTERLY WINDS.

Kane division  starts.

The battle begins in Lono division.

Siren

Shark On Bluegrass