Coyote's Log

Family and Friends, If you are interested, Pictures of the Pacific Cup Race and Return trip are now posted at http://sailcoyote.smugmug.com/Boats Steve Hill Coyote

Last blog entry…. Guessed wrong again, Spinnaker (1.5oz) went up at noon today, and we have had a very lumpy, rolling, pitching, crazy ride in the confused seas. Wind is 20 knots true, would be a lovely sail if not for the waves coming from every direction. By 1900 (7pm) true winds down to 18, so it looks like we will leave the kite up all night. Correction, spinnaker taken down at 2000 (8pm) and replaced by the 135% jib, we are broad reaching for the Light Ship Buoy 90 miles away. No wonder the waves are so crazy, the winds last night peaked at 30 knots true, which will tend to stir things up, the #3 with double reefed main was perfect for the close reach we were on all night 2,253 miles traveled on the return trip so far. Golden Gate is now just 60 miles away!! We are home, today is the day. Coyote

What an adventure this trip has been. Two successful Pacific crossings, and 3rd Place in our Division, what a fantastic ride! When we entered the Pacific Cup we had some idea of the many things we needed to do to get Coyote ready, but there were so many more questions than answers and more to do than time, that at times the preparation was overwhelming. What we found was that there was an abundance of advise, recommendations and help from many sources, from Vendors to individuals. We want to thank the many people we worked with, for all the suggestions, recommendations, and genuine giving of knowledge to make our trips successful. We may have left someone off the list below, but that was simply our oversight, and we apologize. Many thanks for all your help, ideas and workmanship! We thank everyone, in no particular order who has helped us like; Cree, Karl and everyone at Berkeley Marine Center could not have been more helpful or professional, with a genuine concern for Coyote and crew. Glen Hanson at Hanson rigging did a terrific job of preparing Coyote, with creative solutions to some unique situations. After all the high winds and extreme stress on the rig and rigging we came thru with flying colors. The only item which broke during the trip, was an old spinnaker halyard I was too cheep to replace. Santa Cruz and Pineapple Sails performed great, it was a wonder that we did not blow something up. Thanks to both of your great companies for providing the solid horsepower and advise to get a podium finish. Commanders Weather and Paul Kamen for doing such a fine job of weather routing for both the Pacific Cup race and the return trip. Don Melcher at HF Radio On Board delivered on his promise. “You will have one of the best rigs out there, if you follow my advise”, and follow Don’s advise we did. I cannot remember a time when Coyote’s broadcast was not received, or was noted as anything but 5 x 5. Fred Fritz of Fritz Electronics for his advise and recommendations on many, many questions we had, and the simple solutions Fred helped me come up with. All our electronic devises, computer, etc. worked great the entire trip. Even answering my questions via Sat phone on the way home! ScanMar had a difficult time creating and fitting an emergency rudder to Coyote, but it came out clean, and works great in tests we performed in the bay. Glad we did not need it, but glad we had it with us. Chris Strobe of Svendsen Marine for all your help with purchases and all the research you have done for us along the way. Sal’s Inflatable’s for advise and recommendations on packing our Life Raft and MOM. Glad to have them, glad we did not need to use them! John Poole of Poole Refrigeration, thank you for making sure our food stayed cold and frozen during the entire journey. Steve Therrien of VeraCentra was very helpful with the multitude of questions regarding 7 port hubs, Com Ports, and other computer software settings to crack some of the mysterious errors I was getting when trying to interface so many devises. Turns out we have just one USB cable feeding the computer and all the computer programs. Dad, thanks for spending so much time and money assembling our emergency SSB antenna system. Good news is that we have one, better news is that we did not need it! Kathy West for the Coyote logo and design. This really tied it all together with the boat logo, hats and shirts. Thanks, this could not have turned out better. (One woman in Hawaii came up and asked me where she could buy one of the shirts!) Paul Elliot of Valis, was so patient for the past year as I pestered him with so many questions. Paul quietly and kindly replied to my inquiries, and provided a wealth of information for Coyote’s systems. Jim Quanci of Green Buffalo, who has done the Pacific Cup 15 times, had no reservations in answering any of my questions, even though I was a competitor. Fact is, he also offered suggestions on items I had not even considered. Jim was also very helpful the past week as we approached the notorious CA Coast, passing on his wisdom gained from so many years of Pacific crossings. Thank you. Reid, Thanks for getting my arm healed and ready for the trip. Yep, it still hurts a bit so I back off, take some Ibuprofen, and do my exercises…. Rich Ostaggi of Ostaggi Plumbing, thanks for taking care of my “boating” needs, I knew I could turn to you for help. Rosemary Costello for her help cooking and freezing meals for the race. The Pacific Cup organization. The wealth of information disseminated to the competitors thru written materials and seminars was amazing. The organization fosters a “sharing” atmosphere, and everyone just gave and gave. Very impressive. And finally to the two Coyote Crews. To the Pacific Cup Race family crew - Well done, you earned that 3rd place trophy! Connie Hill, Adam Hill, Ryan West, Stuart Hooper, Phil Mummah - it was an honor to race with all of you. You put in so many hours on Coyote, we could not have done it without you. It was wonderful and amazing watching all of you grow and change during the race!! Each of you brought unique talents to the team, that made our team complete, more than I could have asked for. Thanks for making it such a great and fun Pacific Cup. BTW, did we get a team shot with the trophies? To the Pacific Cup Return crew - Well done. Not an easy ride up hill, but you all were wonderful companions on a challenging journey. Rick Elkins, John Dukat, Julia and Jacob Wenegrat, it was a great experience traveling 2,300 miles with you. Making last minute repairs to Coyote, loading the food and fuel, and preparing a boat for the trip without ever sailing on her! I was constantly impressed by your willingness to do everything and anything. Go forward to reef, change headsails, cook, clean, drive, dive on a fouled prop and carry on like a well trained team, when we never did train! We became a team on the way. Never did I need to ask twice, in fact most of the time I did not need to ask. Laying in bed I could hear reefing, unreefing, dropping the spinnaker, cooking, and just carrying on in such an orderly fashion. I always wondered what sail configuration I would awake to! Thanks for making it such a great trip home. We thank everyone for making this amazing trip possible! Connie and Steve Hill Coyote

Well, looks like the spinnaker may be put away for a while…. At check in today, boats talked about “heading for the barn”, which also makes sense to us. We have been heading high just in case of severe weather, but it looks like it is going to go flat tomorrow and Wednesday. Jim Quanci of Green Buffalo confirmed that they are heading for the lightship, so we to have laid that as our course, and are making 7.75 knots SOG. We are officially right in the middle of Gale Alley now, winds are 18-27 knots true, waves are 6-9 feet with whitecaps everywhere. Wind is whistling thru the rigging (well roaring). We have had a few squalls, lots of cloud cover, it seems we are sailing into something interesting…. We are reaching under double reefed main and 135% jib„„strike that - we just changed down to a #3 expecting the wind to continue to back, which will allow easier and faster sailing. Our AIS died today. On some frequencies the SSB blows fuses in the AIS, turns out it blew more than a fuse. I have tried to remember to shut off the AIS circuit before broadcasting, but i forget. To those of you with AIS, you may want to shut them down during HF communications. The crew has kept up the speed! We have averaged 7.25 Knots (SOG) all last night and today. We have reefed, un-reefed, and reefed again as the wind velocity and sea state changes. We passed 2000 miles traveled on the return trip today, with 291 miles to go as of 1630 (4:30pm)! We are flying home! Boy the miles seem easy once you have passed half way! The menu today was more of the same, fried rice and ham for lunch with popcorn and candy for desert (we saw a good movie about 5 people sailing back from Hawaii..we could feel the spray and taste the salt…) dinner was Connie’s chili, with s’mores for dessert! (We each get 3, it’s the simple things isn’t it) Loose or gain weight? The answer is clear. Brushing teeth takes extreme effort as the boat is pounding thru the seas, getting dressed 3 times a day, takes a lot of work, everything from eating, cooking, driving, to moving about is like walking on walls which are moving, so even though we have lots of intake of great food, the energy expended during the day exceeds the intake….. 240 miles to go! Coyote

Today we have had another great spinnaker run. We set the kite at 0600 this morning, and just took it down at 1800 (6pm), a very nice 12 hour run. The Gribs showed that we would be headed around 1700 today, turns out it happened at 1800, the detail and accuracy of the Gribs is amazing. (Grib file shows barometric pressure, wind force and direction and wave height. We averaged 7.5 knots (SOG) for 12 hours with the kite up, now we are running at 7 knots with the 135% jib. Winds are back, 17-22 knots and nearly on the nose. We are reefing now, it is 0330. We have clearly escaped the clutches of the High, and the barometer is now dropping daily. It now stands at 1022 mb. We are maintaining our latitude of 38N, the same as Point Reyes, so we can reach off to SF once we get close to the coast. We understand that the transponders we are carrying and Tracking site for the Pacific Cup is now down. Our current position is 38.00N x 131.41W. There may be some other tracking page at www.pacificcup.org, but we are unsure. We can tell we are getting close to home, with the temperature finally dropping in the past few days. Now watches at night are much colder. This requires thermal underwear, fleece pants and shirts, jackets, heavy socks, boots and foul weather gear. Tonight during my 1900-2300 (7pm to 11pm) watch, the fog was so heavy it rained and rained, the sails pouring water off of them. Getting ready for bed now requires getting off the wet gear, jackets and all the under layers. Now, just the past 2 days have required sleeping bags to keep off the nighttime chill. We have traveled 1892 miles so far and have 435 to go, looks like the return trip will be ~2347 miles. We still have some water in the starboard tank, but have just switched to the port tank which has remained untouched at 55 gallons. So a few of us took showers, warm showers in the head, and boy was that refreshing! It has only been 13 days since my last shower, but it felt good anyway… (actually, we have been bathing daily with bath wipes, which have done a terrific job at keeping everyone fresh.) Tonight’s dinner was Hungarian Goulash with fresh baked chocolate cookies, a wonderful meal for a overcast day. The past day or two have been overcast, at times fog so thick it is raining at night. Today has been nice, but sun only for half an hour. We still have some frozen prepared and frozen meats, enough for 5 more home made meals, and enough pasta and other items to last us another two weeks or so, and one more frozen cherry pie. Boat batteries were at 100% charge rate while we needed to power a few days ago, now we need to charge twice a day to keep them up. Good news is that once we get the engine on, we manually combine the batteries, charge them at 1300 rpm and within no time, we are charged up again. This is sure a relief, as you know a week or so ago, we were having fairly major battery charging issues. Auto has been doing the majority of the driving, even with the spinnaker up, the freezer continues to keep our food frozen solid, AIS looking for ships constantly, Radar doing 10 minute sweeps for approaching traffic, etc. so there is constant drain on the batteries. If the winds hold, it looks like we will be in late Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning. (No Dan, I am not coming to work on Thursday!) 382 miles to go now„„ Coyote

At our normal check in for the returning Pacific Cup boats, at 2000 (8pm PDT) most of the discussion and position reports centered around approaching the CA coast. We will pass thru an area known as Gale Alley, because of its propensity for high winds and corresponding high seas. The boats in or near this area are reporting winds in the 30 knot range, we are hoping the winds will abate to a more moderate 20 knots or so. But just in case, we are coming in a little “high”, our current heading is towards Cape Mendocino so we can reach off in the heavy winds and seas, rather than try to bash our way north thru them, if they occur. Today we were lucky enough to set the spinnaker around Noon and carry it until 9pm this evening, when we buttoned down for the night. Every night we have had much higher winds come up, so rather than risk the boat and stress on the crew, we went back to a reaching configuration with the 135% jib. Working well, we are still making 6.5 knots with an easy quiet motion thru the water. The spinnaker gave us great boat speed, and Auto drove all day, and is currently driving all night too. That gave the rest of the crew time to read, sleep, talk, and generally relax a bit today during the watch routine. Spirits aboard remain high, everyone seems to be having a good time, everyone is looking forward to getting into a normal bed and routine, and some may even dream of a shower….I know I do. 546 miles to go now„„ Coyote

Let me introduce Coyote’s Pacific Cup return crew; #1 Steve Hill, owner of Coyote #2 Rick Elkins, owner of LightSpeed a Wylie 39, a SSS Member(Single Handed Sailing Society)who #1 frequently races against in single handed races. #3 John Dukat, owner of Critical Mass an IOR Mini Tonner, and a Richmond YC member. #4 Jacob Wenegrat and #5 Julia Wenegrat, owners of Pisces a Jason 35. They just returned from cruising in Mexico for the past several years, and now live aboard in the Seattle area. This has been an amazing trip with this great crew. Everyone has ideas on how to make the trip more comfortable, and everyone wants speed to get home faster with!!! Everyone is trying to trim differently, and playing with the sail plan to maximize the speed with in the wind and wave conditions. If necessary they start the engine, roll up the jib and power for wind. We now have a solid breeze, and have flown along after noon and evening. The conditions are challenging at times, for example we just reefed the main sail because we are in 22 knot winds with the 135% jib up - it is midnight and pitch black out, and we are again crashing thru the seas at ~8 knots. It is amazing how much chafe the boat takes when running 24 hours a day for 11 days. We nearly chafed thru our jib sheet, only found it because #2 found a Japanese fishing ball. So now we carry a jib sheet PLUS a secondary jib sheet sheeted in tight just to reduce the risk of having a jib sheet blow, especially during the long nights. Have we talked about ear plugs? Trying to sleep without them is nearly impossible, with all the water running past the boat, crashing into waves, people talking, sails shaking„„Ear plugs stop not only the noise but the motion too, and that is the amazing part. Once ear plugs are in, it feels like the boat has become becalmed, no wind or waves. A few times I have pulled out one plug, only to discover we were still fling along, so back in it went, and to sleep I went. #4 has been working with the Grib files, and has been downloading scheduled weather faxes (something #1 could not figure out how to do, but Jacob did in 3 minutes) and our Routing Software Expedition and has determined that on our present course and speed we will have wind the rest of the way!!! We are now cracked off a bit, and speeding home at a SOG of 7.5 knots and VMG of the same! Only 742 miles to go. Food continues to be fantastic with #5 leading the charge. Ever diligent, cooking prep begins at 2100 (9pm) for the following day, and #5 tells us what is on the menu, um um good. I(I just found out that we are having Egg Muffin Sandwiches for breakfast!) Tonight #5 made Spaghetti and Meatballs, with fresh baked cup cakes by Each morning #2 and #1 wake at 1030 to fresh coffee and notes and directions for finding our breakfast in the oven ready to go! We have never had it so good. The entire crew is looking to have Buffalo Burger’s one of these days, hoping to real in Green Buffalo….. Lunch today consisted of leftovers and hand made Pot Stickers. Wow, these were the real thing! With a bit of Soy Sauce and Mae Ploy Sauce they were not only terrific but beautiful. #2 has done a fantastic job of taking on the KP duty and washing from each meal. This has been terrific as we always have a clean kitchen. Yesterday I caught #2 sawing my dishwashing brush in half! Then he drilled a hole in the stub, and hung it on the faucet. My poor brush, but #2 likes it better with the “sawed off look”, “I can get into the cracks better!”. #5 has been doing trash watch, looking for plastic, and other sea trash. Amazing thing, we have seen very little of trash in the middle of the High, we thought we would see tons. Turns out, the vast majority of trash we have seen during the return trip, seems to be coming from fishing boats. Buckets, line, nets, etc. #1 has (as I understand) joined the snoring group with #2 and Not sure if we are all sleeping better, or if the trip is just wearing on us all. Probably the latter. #1 needs to find out who’s mystery sock landed on his pillow, could be the beginnings of a mutiny? In the past 24 hours we have used the engine just 5 hours, so it looks like we will be bringing extra fuel home with us, now that the winds have filled in. No ships sighted in the past 24 hours, nothing on AIS, nothing on Radar, just Coyote and her crew. At our half way mark we were further from land you can possibly be anywhere else in the world, we are truly on our own out here. A crew dependent on each other, the crew dependent on Coyote, and Coyote dependent upon the crew. 712 miles to go now„„ Coyote

Groundhog Day As day comes to a close, we find ourselves clawing our way - away from the expanding high. Problem is, the high is expanding directly over us, and beating us to SF! This keeps the winds velocity down (bad for sailing), and a poor wind angle (bad for heading to SF). However, we are making the most of it. During the past 48 hours, we have used the engine just 12 hours. We sail along, the wind gets light, so we roll up the jib and poser for 5-10 minutes and pick up the next breeze. We have powered a few times for 2 hours, but we do eventually pick up the wind. Good time to open the hatches and air out the boat, before the next blow and wind waves/spray come. It looks like we may be burning less than 1/2 gallon an hour at the mid RPM’s, so we are really stretching out the fuel, just in case we end up with no wind and need to power for 48 hours…. Then, while heading into ever changing wind direction and velocity we generally let Auto Raymarine Autohelm) drive, because she pays attention, does not take breaks, and does not need to look at a compass or shoreline to get her bearings. This is a very fast and accurate way to move as quickly as possible out of the high. For the past 5 hours we have had a terrific wind (14-20 knots apparent) and we are powering away from the high as fast as possible. The barometer is dropping - which is more good news indicating we are escaping the high. We are still trying to move north, as is the rest of the 18 boat return fleet, so if there are gale conditions on the CA coast, we can broad reach home, rather than try to beat into “Gale Alley”. 840 miles to go now„„ Coyote

Well, we had a few major events today! We officially passed the half way mark at 11 am today! Great, but kind of a non event since we celebrated our half way yesterday. Good thing, because today BBQ’ing would have been a real problem. The wind came up at 10 am. and we had a terrific run today. Sunny and beautiful weather, as we raced along. We passed 999 miles to go, so now we are in the “3 digits” counting down the miles to go… At roll call today, many reported light winds and motoring from breeze to breeze in order to sail. So far we have had our own private wind, and we continue to race along as of this writing (11:30 pm) directly for SF. The forecast for approaching the SF coast is for 20 knot breeze with mild seas, so instead of “going North” we may transit directly in…but will continue to analyze daily. Food time. Yes, it is all about food, and so do the meal surprises. Today I woke to the smell of scrambled eggs, sausage and hash browns. A note on the bottom of a plate indicated that Rick’s and Steve’s breakfast was in the oven! So we enjoyed our coffee, and filling meal. Chinese chicken salad for lunch, and pulled pork tacos for dinner. We will NOT be loosing any weight this trip. Wonder what is on Julia’s menu for tomorrow??? Still a bit weird getting use to another tack after so many days on the Starboard. Cabinets continue to be opened, only to have items flying out and onto our chest. Lee cloths which were not previously used (like Jacob’s) have been strung out to keep us in bed. Leaks are all gone, and the boat is now dry, what a relief. And all day for two days now we have had hatches open to air out the boat. Seas have been smooth, boat is healed over, and no pounding or waves coming aboard. We saw what appeared to be pods of dolphins, several times today, jumping out of the water from 500 yards or so, but could not really make them out. Did see another sailboat this afternoon, one who is not in our return group. We tried to call them on radio, but no answer, so it will remain a mystery boat. A cargo ship did cross within 5 miles of us today, so that was kind of exciting, after seeing nothing for 8 days! Well, 962 miles to go now, so off to bed to rest up for my 0330 watch. Coyote