OK, my turn:
What Worked
Raymarine X5 Autopilot computer - I had the same setup as Paul, and found the X5 computer to be pretty decent. Unfortunately on high gain it commands a lot of action from the drive, which wears out quickly. I mounted one control head by the tiller and one by the companionway so I could easily switch the pilot on and off, or adjust it without having to leave the cabin, let alone dive across the entire cockpit.
SSB - My antenna was a piece of speaker wire inside the spectra backstay, and my ground was a 1" copper braid hose-clamped to a keel bolt. It seemed to work at least as well as most of the other boats out there.
Dry bags - I learned this the hard way on my qualifier. On a wet boat like the Olson 30, anything you don't want wet should be in a dry bag (I had two big ones) or a ziploc. Charts were always in vinyl chart cases. I also had 4 or 5 rubbermaid bins, tupperwares, or other plastic cases.
Solar panels - I had one 135W and one 40W Kyocera solar panels. This was overkill, and the 40W panel was installed in a position where it wasn't working most of the time. I would probably go with two 65W panels next time. Autopilot drove maybe 80% of the race, laptop/AIS/instruments were on 24/7.
Netbook computer - I bought an ASUS eeePC 1005PE for the race. It's the lowest power consumption PC on the market, and I replaced the hard disk with a solid-state drive to make it wave-proof and lower power consumption even more. Total power draw was about 600mA, and it never crashed. Cost: ~$550, including SSD.
1.5oz Heavy reaching kite (code 3) by Hyde - good for reaching in anything from 0 to 18 knots, and running when I'm too chicken to put up the big 0.5oz chute. I had 4 chutes, but ended up flying only these two, with no damage.
Spinnaker Net - don't fly a chute without it. I spent a lot of the race watching the spinnaker trying to make love to the forestay.
Solar showers - Adam gave me one, which I didn't use on the race, but used often in Hanalei and on the trip back. I used 11 of my 28 gallons of water for the race (0.78 gallons/person/day), and ~30 of 45 gallons for the return (0.65 gallons/person/day), with several hot showers a week each, which is a pretty amazing thing on a wet little ULDB. Some of the water jugs had slow leaks, but I didn't worry about it too much.
Lewmar OneTouch winch handle - I just have to rave about this thing somewhere. It's awesome.
The Olson 30 - the boat's record speaks for itself. Mine has the "old" mast, spreaders, and rudder. I tried to beef up the deck a little bit, but it was probably a waste of time.
Bonine - I never took it, but it seemed to work really well for Peter on the trip home.
Earplugs - I didn't wear any during the race, because I wanted to wake up if something wasn't right, but they were invaluable for the delivery home. Next time I would try to put some sound insulation near the autopilot mount.
Rubber/Foam padding - the Olson 30's a little tight down below, with lots of bolts protruding. Pad them or your scalp will suffer. I also padded the mainsheet traveler for my shins' sake.
Cockpit cushions - I had a bunch of cushions for kitchen chairs lying in my garage.
Food - Fruit juice (I didn't pack nearly enough for the race). UHT milk. Round loaves of fresh bread in ziploc bags will last a couple weeks. Tortillas for when the bread runs out. Dried sausage. Citrus fruits. Eggs. Hard cheeses like Gruyere and Emmental stay good for over a week. Jam stays good forever. Couscous is much faster to cook than rice or pasta and uses almost no water. This is all the good stuff I ate before I got to the usual canned and dehydrated things. Canned pears - mmmm!
Fishing gear - It's amazing what fish will try to eat.
What Didn't
Raymarine tiller pilot drive unit - I wore through a brand new one on day 3 of the race. I then lowered the gain and the next one (which already had at least 500 miles on it) held all the way to Seattle.
Raymarine wind/speed instruments - water squirted under my poorly-constructed sea-hood and the connectors immediately corroded away. The speed instrument is horribly inaccurate (I tried to calibrate it multiple times). I fixed the corrosion on the wind instrument enough to use it as a reference at night, but didn't trust it to drive the boat to AWA, so I always had the AP on compass mode.
Breathable Foulies - They work for a couple hours. I had several sets of waterproof gear, but next time I'll have a pair of non-breathable ones for when I'm really getting soaked. I spent the first 3 days of the race wet and mildly hypothermic.
Ankle boots - I have an aversion to high boots, but 3 days of wet feet has probably cured that. I'm lucky I didn't get trench foot.
Chartplotter software - I had a "black box" AIS with no display, so I just ran freeware or open-source chartplotting software on the laptop to display targets. SeaClear kept giving me false alarms, so I ran most of the race with the AIS alarm off. For the trip back I used OpenCPN, which handled the AIS better, but is still far from perfect.
Dinghy - The little West Marine/Zodiac dinghy itself was great, but the oars and oarlocks are worthless. Rowing through surf was adventurous.
Sailing gloves - I don't know why, I just don't wear them. My hands looked like a leper's in Hanalei, but were fine for the rest of the trip.
Bananas in a gear hammock - Don't do it.
Other Thoughts
I got a lot of interference from the autopilot on some SSB channels, and none on others. This was kind of a problem trying to pick up weatherfax, and I ended up doing a lot of hand steering at times to try to get a clear picture.
Netbook computer - I didn't spend enough time making sure all the software worked properly, and ended up not being able to download my GPS trace, which is too bad. The weatherfax software was also problematic and kept chopping up my charts.
Hygiene - Wet Ones, a good absorbent towel, and Lantiseptic are a must to treat the rash and pressure sores that show up after 3 days of sitting on hard surfaces all day and night in wet underwear. A spray bottle with rubbing alcohol is also a great deodorant/cleaner/antiseptic.
Alarms/Timers - I had two decently loud digital kitchen timers which I could set up to 99 minutes. I would set them for 20-30 minutes during the first day or two, then 45-60 minutes for 3 or 4 days, until I started sleeping through them. For the second half of the race I figured I was "in tune" enough with the boat, and stopped setting the timers and just slept through the night. My watch alarm clock could not wake me up.
My boat lives in fresh water, so I was pretty surprised by all the corrosion and salt that showed up. At times the deck was slippery from all the salt. Cleats stopped working because they were jammed with salt. A daily freshwater rinse of important hardware would've been good.
Wish List
Satphone or Pactor modem to send/receive emails and gribs.
A better dodger/sea hood setup to minimize the water going down below.
A loud timer/alarm I can set to 3 or 4 hours.
Standalone AIS - I really like the Standard Horizon combined AIS/VHF, but a Class B AIS transponder would give me more peace of mind.
More books to read, and maybe some audiobooks.
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Adrian
Idefix
