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Interview with Gavin Brady, Invisible Hand

Post Race Interview with Gavin Brady of the Invisible Hand Pac52. Invisible Hand is currently standing 1st in Class and 1st in ORR Overall in the 2017 Transpac Race.  

Q: What was the most challenging part of the race for you?

A: The build up. The 3 days before the race. There was a lot going on, a lot of things had to come together quickly. There was one of those moments where if everybody achieved their goals, we knew that when we got to the start line on the same piece of water as our competitors we were going to have an edge.

Q: How much strategy was directed towards beating Bad Pak.

A: I think not a lot of strategy was put towards just Bad Pak, because we felt that each team would actually push each other harder. So if we were on the same piece of water, we've raced against them in 3 of the Pac52 series, we know their performance, we're sister ships so we've got the same boats, and the modes are the same. We knew what they had, and they know what we've got, so I think we felt that actually working with them was an asset, and then let the games play out in the Molokai Channel. So we were thinking it was going to come down to 3-4 miles in the last part of the race. We thought them being strong was an asset, we wanted them to be strong so they would push us. So to be honest, we did in the last 3 days probably leave a little on the table by being more defensive rather than attacking. We sort of jibed across and took some wind shifts that we normally wouldn't have just to basically let the clock run down and be safe so I think in some ways not having them close to us actually cost us some on our performance.

Interview with Tyler Wolk, Rio100

Interview starts at 5:30 mark of video.

Chim Chim Racing Blog

Finish Line / Diamond Head in Sight

July 14, 2017, 0400

Well it's almost over! What a great experience! Second time across. We beat our last run by almost 2 full days. We also have earned the Gunboat Transpac record (made up by us of course), which was previously held by Extreme H2O.

Bittersweet for sure. Can't wait to be on land, can't wait to talk to my kids, can't wait to see my wife (I beat her here, so I'll have to wait a couple of days to meet her). But I can tell you that I will truly miss the watches, the day and nights on the ocean, and the camaraderie shared with a great group of people! We proved that pre Cheers and post Cheers can live peacefully in the world together!

Final MVM/MVP: John Gallagher! Thank you so much for sharing this experience with us all. I know how much this crew appreciates you and all that you have done to make this possible for all of us. For me, it's definitely a dream come true, and I think that I'm not the only one on the boat that feels that way. Sincere gratitude! Special shout out to Carol!

Out for now!

Jason

Azure Racing Blog

Azure Day 11 Update

July 13, 2017

We are 542 miles away from Honolulu and trying to make some southerly. Our routing software keeps telling us to go west. It is very hard to keep going in the wrong direction with the anticipation of favorable winds, but alas we are pushing west. We have second guessed our software 3 times now, and each time we were spanked.

At 4:00 am I went over the optimal route with Ted at the beginning of his shift. The software was telling us to gibe around this area in front of us, but we could not understand why, so we just decided to keep going straight. Ted woke me up at 4:00 am, with a concerned look on his face - we gotta go! That means gibe in sailing lingo. I came up on deck and looked forward to see a big black cloud as far and you can see with bolts of lightning hitting all around the center. "I don't think we should go in there" Ted says. Gibe! Jim drove and Ted and I pulled off one of the fasted two pole jibes on record. We were thankfully paralleling the back of the cloud when the sun came up. Then we saw the most spectacular double rainbow for the entire 180 degrees of the cloud - amazing. At first we thought it was a squall that should travel at about 10 knots but this cloud was not moving. We just skirted the monster and all is good, I kept thinking of the joke Jim would tell about the clown who died in his second rodeo.

Now we are cruising to our last gibe point about 100 miles ahead of us, then we are "all in" for our final approach. If all works out we should have a strong finish. We are getting pretty low on food and beverages but should be in Hawaii on the 17th. I keep looking at that small bag of ice and wonder is there may have been a misscalculation - we will see.

Sail faster damnit!

Sin Duda Racing Blog

Sin Duda Update

July 13, 2017 17:30

Today we continue to jibe, jibe and Jibe again. The breeze has lightened and we are working hard to work the angles for the fastest route to Hawaii. As I type this we are 416 miles from the finish. So close… yet so far. Speeds are slower, but we continue to push hard.

Tonight is Lasagna with meat sauce night (freeze dried – mountain House). The excitement is building. The supply of tasty snack food is nearly exhausted so we must be close to Hawaii. In the words of Ty, “It is disturbing how many 'magic Beans' Jelly bellys" we have gone through. Editor’s note: as of 5:00pm yesterday there were no more Magic Beans. PB and J tortillas are now being consumed at an alarming rate.

We continue to be attacked by flying fish. Last night one shot across the cockpit missing 2 of us by inches. I think they want our “magic beans”.

Rick Graef – Bowman S/V Sin Duda