Mike,
Thanks for sharing your story. It was well written, candid and informative. Your tale clearly highlights some of the big challenges in long-distance solo sailing. And you and your yacht made it home safely, congratulations.
I’m definitely on the side of personal responsibility, as much as practical… Whatever that means; as in so many things, there is a lot of grey area between too much guidance and too little. The SSS struggles to balance imposing requirements with personal responsibility. IMHO the SSS does a pretty god job. It should continue to be a bug light for weirdos and facilitate their waking dreams with races, seminars, this website, etc. But the SSS can’t and shouldn’t be responsible for individual choices above and beyond basic safety and equipment standards (which is a shifting target for many reasons including the relentless advance in available technologies). The major obstacle to moving from hardware requirements to personal requirements is that, unlike the common need for a sound vessel and basic communications (whatever that means), acceptable ways that individuals prepare and act during the race vary widely. For example, some sleep 8 hrs a day, others cat nap. Some have refrigeration, others don’t.
For me, the most important part of preparing for the SHTP was doing a lot of single handing. Over several years before 2012 I worked from several hour-long trips, including stays at the SB channel islands, to non-stop overnighters and finally several continuous days at sea under sail. It took me three tries before I completed my own ‘latepac’ in 2012, but I learned a lot in the process, especially about how to manage my sleep and diet. In my case, my best habits under way turn out to be very different than my habits ashore. My SHTP prep kind of culminated in single handing from SB to SF (that was harder than the 2012 SHTP). But after all that, I learned a lot in 2012 and felt compelled to modify my sleep and diet regimes quite a lot for the 2014 race; which, except for a (self-inflicted) bum knee, was for the better compared to my 2012 experience. A key change that I learned the hard way in 2012 was to, rather than stick to a rigid schedule, adapt my sleep to the conditions:
- During part 1, the inside a washing machine phase, I slept a lot (‘cowered in my bunk’ as Ken Roper so aptly described it). Very nice to be able to see instruments without having to move much. All I ate the 1st two days in 2014 was tea and honey.
- Part 2, the transition from on to off-wind, pre-squall, pleasant part, is the easiest – I did more or less 2 hrs up, 2 hrs down.
- Part 3, spinnaker up, squalls on is the trickiest…. I basically stayed up during squall hours (all night) and slept hard for a few hours late morning and then cat napped thru the day until it was time to repeat.
My diet changed for the better too, but that’s another story. The result was I finished much better rested in 2014 than I did in 2012 even though I pushed the boat somewhat harder (of course the boat was better prepared too…).
The bottom line is that I’m pretty confident that my experience is different than others, and that there are other effective ways to become comfortable single handing to HI. The key is to know thyself and your boat (whatever that means).
Steve
