Hailing from the San Francisco Bay area and SFYC and StFYC, Brett Crawford and Jason Halloway are co-skippering their 2005 Berret-Racoupeau-designed Beneteau 49 entry Knotty in the 2021 Transpac. The two are part of an interesting bi-national team of seven crew from the US and Denmark.

As Crawford says, “Our team is a group of long-time close friends with sailing being the common thread that connects us all. We have all sailed together (and against each other) for many years in the Knarr one design class in the USA, Denmark and Norway. Our team is half American and half Danish. The guys on our team have both raced and cruised all over the world, but I am the only member of our team who has prior experience racing to Hawaii.”

As such, everyone else has had this race on their Bucket List, and the decision to race in 2021 is prompted by one simple fact: “We are certainly not getting any younger!”

The Knotty team of Anders Fisker, Christian Fisker, Lars Gottfredsen, Tim Von Nieda, Scott Sullivan, Jason Holloway and Crawford nonetheless plans to race with the proper priorities in place.

“The thing that I am most looking forward to about this 2021 Transpac race,” he said, “is making the 10-day passage with my closest friends on board. In preparation we purchased another 165-quart cooler to hold enough beer and wine for 10 days. We probably should have gone with a larger size cooler. If there was an ORR rule against having too much fun, Team Knotty would be disqualified the moment the starting gun is fired!”

For their qualifying trip, the team completed in early October their 401-mile passage from San Francisco to Newport Beach in two days. As for goals, the Knotty team’s are simple: “To make every minute of this race fun,” said Crawford. “No stress. No yelling. No anxiety. Just 7 guys having a fun sail to Hawaii.”