Once again, I find myself in the final days prior to undertaking my 5th Pacific Cup sailboat race to Hawaii. We sold our J120 in early 2023 after completing the 2018 and 2022 races, and I had planned on taking a break from this amazing, but all consuming, endeavor. As the summer of 2023 unfolded, just out of curiosity, I took a look at the boats that had entered the 2024 race and just for grins took a look at the crew list postings to see who the eager beavers were looking for a ride. In an unusual crew list posting, a boat that had entered was looking for help to co-skipper and help prepare the boat and crew for the race. Hmm, that was unexpected and interesting - a good transition from doing this on your own boat to helping someone else do it on theirs. Since this type of role would take a lot of my free time over the next year I ran it by my wife and she agreed, it was a great fit with my experience/skill set - go for it. I contacted David, we spoke a bit, went for a sail, he checked my references, and off we went. It has been a busy past year getting the boat ready for this race. David is all in. We spent a bit of time early on talking about the navigator role. I could add it to my already pretty full plate, we could bring on an experienced navigator, or (at my suggestion) David could take on this role. Most boats use Expedition software to import weather data and plan routing - skills squarely in David's wheelhouse (tech guru that he is). David jumped at the opportunity and over the past months has excelled at becoming Expedition proficient and is fully ready to put us on a good route to Hawaii. For our given course I'll make sure the boat performs as best she can. We have pulled together a great crew with complementary skill sets (there will be five of us in total) and we've had a great time getting to know one another through our practice sails and races. The boat is ready. The crew is ready. I'm enjoying seeing the excitement from all the first timers (that's everyone but me) and looking forward to another amazing adventure sailing to Hawaii.
Aloha everyone,
Tracy