It’s feeling right, relaxed and deliberate, in slow motion… now.
The boat project work has been done for a while. The sail inventory has been good to go for weeks. We’ve had none of those last minute scrambles that require immediate attention and running around like your hair is on fire. Personal gear was loaded-in over the weekend, unpacked and put in its place. The few small items left to bring twill be worn aboard (e.g. sunglasses, closed toe sandals) and are already set aside. Non-perishable food has been loaded, packaging stripped. We’ll load perishables last, when we board, as planned.
With the boat, sails, gear and provisioning all set, the focus is on the weather (Wx), right where it should be at this point. We’ve had recurring daily weather discussions for a while, interpreting data, forecasts, analyses and more from a variety of high quality, specialized sources. David is on point as navigator and has more info to crunch now that time is narrowing agains our start. He is running a healthy process with the best observations, forecasts, analyses and ideas rising to the top, and then constantly re-evaluating as the situation evolves. We’ll have one more focused zoom early tomorrow morningbefore leaving home for the 0900 boat call.
We’ve been watching the divisions that started Monday via the Yellow Brick Race Tracker (https://cf.yb.tl/paccup2024). With the “glass off” (i.e., light wind from the evening's weather cycle near shore) boats were really slow last night but are now moving. Many reported seeing lots of wildlife: whales, dolphin, etc. Hopefully we’ll see more wind than they had as we break away from land effects and work towards the synoptic level winds. Festina Lente favors more wind.
We lost a strong boat, Joy Ride (https://admin.pacificcup.org/entry/joy-ride), to another division, and the boat Translated 9 US (https://admin.pacificcup.org/entry/translated-9-us) skippered by legend Pay Cayard (https://cayardsailing.com/, https://thesailingmuseum.org/inductee/cayard-paul/ joined our division.
Festina Lente’s PHRF 4 start is tomorrow at 1140 PDT.
- - Jeremy - -