Why I want to do the singlehanded transpac

[haulback]

Reading through another bunch of notes elsewhere on the forum I started thinking that this may be a suitable time for us all to dredge up some of the reasons (real or imagined) on why we are putting ourselves through the excitement and anticipation - along with associated pain and suffering - of getting to the start line for this year's race.

Although I am certain there will be many who are more eloquent than myself, I will start off with a few submissions

1) I really like offshore sailing and this is a perfect excuse to go again, even if it is only for a couple of months.

2) Sailing from the mainland to Hawaii is truly one of the great passages of all. Following winds, following seas and every day is a bit better than the one before as the miles roll under the keel.

3) The experience of making landfall after a couple weeks at sea is one of life's special moments. And one that is reserved only for sailors.

4) I have seldom worked so hard, or been rewarded as much, as I have from sailing this race. You will be amazed at what you CAN do.

5) You will never again have to say 'I was thinking of doing it'.

6) I like the people I meet doing the race - although I have no idea what they are like in any other context apart from sailing - and count them as good friends.

7) Although everybody sails as well and as hard as they can, and each covets the thought of a 'win' at the finish, the level of pure sportsmanship displayed during the race is second to none. I think this becomes part of the rather special feeling of fellowship amongst the competitors that they go on about.


To all those first-timers considering whether or not to participate this year - There is the rest of your life to be spent doing the 'sensible thing' and only one chance to cross the start line in July.......Your life will be the richer for doing so.

Jim/Haulback

 

[nereida]

Excellent contribution, Jim - you have a great way of putting it & I'm sure many of us will go along with all you've said!
You've probably given people thinking that maybe they can't manage the race this year a set of excellent reasons to make sure they do...
I know I gained a lot from doing the race in '06 - both from enjoying meeting the people involved - both racers & non-racers - and learning a lot from the experience of trying to sail "Nereida" to go better/faster than we'd done before - for which I thank all concerned with the race.

Jeanne
"Nereida"

 

[Alchera]

Nicely put, Jim. It's difficult to explain to those who haven't done the race why this one is special, but you've come close. Whenever I get discouraged about the work involved in doing the race 'just one more time' all I have to do is reread some of the old logs and posts in the archives and it brings those great feelings back again, and I'm good to go again!

- Mark

 

[cr1]

Hi Jim and all,

Thanks for the motivational input. I know for me, any worthwhile goal that I've had to work up to has been by myself. Meaning either single handed or climbing a mountain. You can't explain what it's like when you get on top of the peak even though there's only time for a look and an apple. But the getting in shape, prepariation and anticipation of the journey are a fair percentage of the whole undertaking. My mind's obviously been focused on mainly this event since I committed to it.

Rich
Horizon

 

[admin]

I have reasons, but they're not really happy ones any more. I have a job to do....self respect to sail for.

However, I know what it will be like to sail for fifteen or sixteen days and not do anything else. That in itself is a reward beyond most rewards anywhere else in this world. I will treasure that.

I am looking forward to the smell of Kauai after two weeks at sea. i am looking forward to being 60 miles out and watching the birds show me the way to the island. I am looking forward to hearing the voice on the radio telling me that I have finished. I am looking forward to strapping on the belt buckle that says that after all these years I have done what I set out to do. My belt buckle...that I earned. I've waited long enough.

Those are my reasons. I know this post is a little bit of a downer...sorry for that.

Oh, Alan H here....logged on as Administrator..

 

[cr1]

Alan,

Not a downer at all. I'm a first timer and any insight I can get is valued.

Thanks,

Rich
Horizon

 

[blighbaum]

No, Alan, it's not a downer. I also have personal demons that need to be slain. This may sound maudlin, but ever since 4th grade when Mrs. Fleming assigned Captain Slocum's "Sailing Alone Around the World" (it may have been a condensed version), I've been thinking that someday, someday, I'd make an ocean passage in a small boat alone. And remember the great conditions on the first two days of the 2003 Long Pac? It was my first offshore venture alone, and I was too anxious to enjoy it fully. I hope we can have some good conditions, and that I will have the right mental state - watchful but not nervous - to enjoy them. (Not to mention not screwing up and going aground after finishing!) Apart from the demons, your post also brought back some memories of my brief and long-ago career as a merchant seaman -- the smell of land when you've been at sea for a while! I think it will be great to spend two weeks and more sailing along, with nobody on my case, answering to nobody, and then arive in beautiful Hanalei!

- Tom Kirschbaum, Feral

 

[Ergo]

I did my first SHTP just to do it. I'd never been offshore except for the LongPac, didn't know how to fly a spinnaker, didn’t really know any of the other skippers and had no idea what I was getting into. I did the second because the first one was one of the most satisfying experiences of my life. Others have identified some of the specific bests like the bliss of sailing in the trades, just sailing for days and days, figuring out how to fix things I didn't expect to break and being a part of something that was truly extraordinary. Making some friends I'll be proud to know for the rest of my life. All of these things are profoundly meaningful to me.

My second SHTP was nothing like the first. I had higher expectations. I'd done it already. I'd made my bones. I knew and had raced against some of the other skippers. I liked the recognition of having done it. I knew how to fly a spinnaker. I was a “vet”. I even harbo(u)red aspirations of beating Phil (the '04 winner). Ergo had a heavy cargo of ego. In short, I'd copped a little attitude and lost part of the pure wonder of the experience; big mistake.

The race, however, is a great leveler. In some ways it's an easy race; I've heard it said that you can probably get from SF to Hawaii on a bail of hay and there's some truth in that. In my opinion, most of the regular SSS races are technically more difficult than the SHTP. The SHTP is just much longer, things break and you have to fix them or do without. I know the experience of sailing alone for 21 ('06) or 16 days ('04) changed me in ways that I’m still trying to understand.

After the first race, a cousin of mine was asking me about it. After a few minutes, she looked at me and asked who I was talking about because I kept saying “we did this” or “we did that.” It startled me. I was talking about me and Ergo. I was also talking the other skippers. It occurred to me that I’d never really felt like I was alone out there.

Last month I decided to sit out '08. I'm helping Synthia on the race committee. I told Synthia that I'd do anything but be on the race deck for the start. I don't know if I want to watch the fleet leave and not be with it. First time racers should be aware that the SHTP is a very addictive behavior.

 

[BobJ]

Speaking of addictive behavior, the first two posters in this very thread have gone on to circumnavigate. Jim "went on around" after SHTP04 and was waiting for us in Hanalei two years later.

Jeanne is currently in Cape Town, preparing Nereida for the sail back up and across the Atlantic. (You can follow her progress at svnereida.com)

Somewhere there's an old Rand McNally World Atlas with my planned circumnavigation marked in purple felt-tip pen. I marked it in there when I was 12 . . .

 

[John Hayward]

Simple really………. When I was going to college in San Diego and sailing my tubby little Columbia 22, I was often out in the ocean alone and thought “there is nothing between me and Hawaii but water and willpower.” Thirty years later I still have the same thought only now I am preparing to make it happen. I think the call of long ocean passages, especially singlehanded, is something that it’s impossible to explain. Sky diving, mountain climbing, all the same. If somebody asks you “why” then you are probably wasting breath and time trying to explain it to them. Other reasons include things like it will make you a better sailor and it will help you learn how to make your boat as seaworthy as possible. There is also the challenge of being self-sufficient a thousand miles from the nearest West Marine. As stated before, if something breaks you fix it, jury patch it or do without it. Before I did my qualifier last summer I had never been offshore alone overnight. I had been offshore overnight yes, but alone, no. I thought I would like it, I was wrong. I loved it! I am hoping the trip to HI will be less busy, warmer and give me more time to just enjoy “being there.” The challenge for me will not be to win the race (although this would be nice) but to sail my boat as fast as it’s capable of and to try to make good tactical decisions. If I do this, then I will have “won” personally. As a side note, I am really enjoying the process of getting the boat ready. I try not to think about the cost because I know that crossing the finish line in Kauai will make the effort and expense seem trivial. I know that the wonderful memories will last much longer than the pain of writing all those checks…….

See you all there.

John H

 

[Ergo]

This is an interesting thread.

About a month ago, I posted a brief post on why I am not racing in ‘08. I finished that post with a statement that I was willing to do anything I could on the ’08 race committee but would not be on the race deck at the start. About two weeks ago I experienced what, for me, was a breakthrough moment. Anyone who has done or is preparing to do the TransPac knows that before, during and after, the race is an all-consuming commitment. During the four years I invested in ‘04 and ’06, I thought about the race, literally, every day: often many times a day.

Two weeks ago, the thought, as it had many times, concerned my being towed by the Coast Guard cutter, Sockeye, from a point 80 miles west and 20miles north of Point Reyes to Bodega Bay. That’s how my return trip from Hanalei ended. This wasn’t a scenario that had occurred to me before either race.

That part of the ‘06 experience haunted me for the last 18 months. The fact that I had been towed in by the Coast Guard left me with a feeling of failure and shame. I imagined that the other racers would be embarrassed by the incident, and I would lose the right to count myself among them. I imagined that sailors like Haulback, Harrier, Tiger Beetle and…………..eventually everyone, would think of me as a pariah. I almost skipped the really great party that Alchera threw after the race because I didn't want to talk about it.

The only time I actually did talk about it with another racer was about a week after I got home and got a call from Sail La Vie. I was still quite fried and ended up telling him every excruciating detail: the dead engine, the dying battery bank, the broken wind vane, the gale, getting hit by the cutter when they were trying to pass me the tow line, getting drenched, twice, by waves that broke over the stern, hand steering for six hours to keep Ergo lined up behind the cutter, 43 out of 49 days offshore, Sara, my wife, not recognizing me when she came to pick me up at the restaurant in Bodega (I’d lost 28 pounds since the start of the race, hadn’t shaved in 3 weeks and looked like a homeless person) etc. Phil laughed his ass off; so did I. He’ll never know how grateful I am for that.

Two weeks ago, I thought about waking up during that tow at about 3:00 am because Ergo wasn’t moving and everything was quiet. When I’d left the helm at around 1:00 am and asked Sockeye if I could change into some dry clothes and get some sleep, they’d said ok but that I should call them on channel 68 every hour. I passed out, didn’t call and they tried raising me for almost an hour on VHF. They then decided that they needed to see what had happened to me. That’s about when I woke up.

I climbed up to the cockpit and looked at Sockeye idling about 100 yards away. It was all lit up. Flashing blue lights, white lights, halogen lights on the rear deck, crew shouting and running around. If a troop of chimps had boarded Ergo at that point, I would have fit right in. I could have stood there with the chimps thinking “Bright lights – pretty” I might even have qualified as the alpha chimp by taking the thought to another level “Bright lights – pretty – I wonder what this means?

Sockeye deployed an inflatable that scooted back to me and a Coastie stepped aboard. I was happy to see him but had no idea why he was paying me a visit. I was still in the “Bright lights – pretty” loop. The coastie came aboard, I welcomed him, he decided that I wasn’t a danger to myself or others and I went below fell asleep and he sat in the cockpit and kept an eye on me.

Two weeks ago it occurred to me that when the Coast Guard showed up I was done, completely done. I was past exhausted, slightly hypothermic and had the mental acuity of a lower primate. More importantly, it occurred to me that the extraordinary community of people who are the Singlehanded TransPac never made me feel judged nor found me wanting.

Following this epiphany, I told Sara, my wife, that I truly felt ok about not racing this time. If I had raced, it would have really been about making up for that tow. After eighteen months of regret over taking the tow, I’ve accepted that the chimp that was sailing Ergo at that point might not have gotten her home. I told Sara that I was ok with not racing because “I didn’t feel like I had anything to prove” by doing it.

I’m planning on being on the race deck on July 12, 2008 and being really excited for the folks that are going out the Gate. It’s an amazing experience. Have fun.

I might race again in 2010 but it won't be to prove anything then either.

Bill Merrick

 

[AlanH]

Possibly the worst moment in the last decade of my life was the five seconds about 3:00 Sunday afternoon, after the 2004 SHTP start, when I went down below and watched the hull of my boat flexing in and out about 6 inches every time we pushed into a wave. The bow sections would flex in and pop out, about every 20 seconds or so. It must have been doing that for the last 30 hours.

I stuffed sailbags...anything I could to pad that motion, and it sunk into my head that my TransPac was over. The gale was easing, but the seas were still big. If I kept going I'd probably die. I tacked over and headed back to California, putting the load on the other side of the hull, sailing for Morro Bay.

It was getting dark when I realized that the two waves that had broken in the cockpit saturday afternoon had leaked into my ignition key opening, shorted the ignition circuit and flattened both the batteries. I had no electricity. What I didn't know until two weeks later was that somehow it had also screwed up my alternator, which was shorted out and ALSO was draining my batteries. I was 180 - 200-odd miles out with no juice and I had to sail back into the gale I had almost sailed out of. That night was horrible. it was WORSE than the gale we sailed out into after the start.

That night I was almost run down by something big. I remember the lights. I found out that I couldn't go aback with two reefs in and a storm jib, the storm jib wasn't big enough to balance the helm. I wound up lying ahull. The next morning was flat-dead calm by late-morning. I sat and went nowhere, about 30 miles off the coast. I used one armband strobe for SOME sort of light that night. Still, no wind, and the battery on the armband strobe died. I had extras, I could have shown that armband strobe for 4-5 mights, but I was getting in close enough that I didn't want to be using strobes if I could help it. I spent about 5 hours trying to resurrect my gasoline DC generator to get some charge in the boats batteries. The motor wouldn't start. I disassembled the whole thing, it refused to start. I finally broke down and cried like a toddler for a good hour. I finally used the sat phone to call Coast Guard Group Morro Bay. They came out in a flat-dead calm and hauled me into Morro Bay. I've never been so humiliated in my life.

About four days later, after replacing the ignition switch and sort-of beefing up the hull I decided to try for Monterey. I didn't realize that the alternator was shot and was draining my batteries. I figured that I'd charged them up on a battery charger, really topped them off and I had lights for at least 3-4 nights. In fact I had lights for half a night. I left around noon. That night it blew 30 knots, easy and the fog was so thick I couldn't see 50 feet.

For three days it was whisper quiet all day long and blew 30 knots on the nose all night, with pea soup fog. I had no lights and no autopilot and was always on edge, not trusting the structural integrity of the boat. It was fucking MISERABLE to not trust the boat. Thank god for the Navik. I finally got past Point Sur, about 4-5 miles off the point, not by sailing by it, but because the waves were SO steep in minimal wind, that for about 8-9 hours we slammed around and the the kinetics of the boat drove us forward. The boat was so thrashed around that the wind had no effect, the sails couldn't catch any of it. It was the longest day I have ever spent on the water. There were ghosts of breeze....and

t...hen we finally got a few miles north of Point Sur and the wind totally died off of the Bixby Creek bridge. It was millpond smooth and we were about 4 miles out. I watched another sailboat go by me about a mile to seaward, heading for Monterey. I just cried my eyes out again, I was so tired and discouraged. I finally broke down and called the Coasties on the sat phone again. I wasn't very nice to the Coasties. I didn't cuss them out but I wasn't exactly pleasant. They refused to get me, so I called Vessel Assist. A couple of hours later I got picked up for the 5 hour tow to Monterey. That cost about $1,200. AGAIN, towed into Port.

And now I had to get on an airplane and fly to Hawaii and hang with my friends from the SSS who had completed their races, and put on a brave smile for my in-laws 50th wedding anniversary. They had all gone to Hawaii because I was going to sail there. I almost lost it in the Awards Ceremony when Bill Charron gave me the Transpac belt buckle, though I coughed out a memorable speech if I remember rightly. I kept the vest and the little plaque, but I quietly left the belt buckle on the table.

Joan and I spent another week on Kauai, and had a nice vacation. When we came back I went back down to Monterey and spent the rest of my allotted time off repairing the boat so that I could sail it back up the coast to San Francisco.

Those days, from the moment I went down below and saw the hull flexing, to the morning after the tow into Monterey, were horrible. They were a nightmare, and some of the worst days of my life. I have not been the same person since then, and the truth is that sailing is no longer a joyful thing for me. It's unfinished business, a challenge, something I have to do, but not so much something I WANT to do any more. I am sailing to Hawaii so that I don't have to listen to the word "failure" in my head when I look at myself in the mirror. I've written this before.

The truth of all this was driven home to me this past year when I wasn't spiritually and psychically able to hang tough and finish the 2007 LongPac. It wasn't dangerous out there, it was calm and quiet and easy. But I couldn't do it. I spent the entire race waiting for some horrible thing to happen. I managed to enjoy one sunny afternoon, but the rest of the time I was just sick with worry, waiting for whatever god-awful thing was gonna happen. Having a malfunctioning VHF radio didn't help. When I sat becalmed for 8 hours I just packed it in.

I'm glad I managed to re-qualify later. My head and heart have settled and I'm not a bundle of nerves offshore any more. But the 2007 LongPac was no fun.

I am hoping that when the TransPac is over, and maybe during the sailing of it, I'll find some real joy in sailing again, but the honest truth is that I just want it to be over. I want to cross the finish line, earn the belt buckle, and have done what I set out to do fifteen years ago. I don't care where I finish, I don't care where I place or who I beat. I just want it to be OVER; Start the race, do the race, finish the race. To get there, I have work to do.

.....Not the usual reason for sailing to Hawaii.

 

[AlanH]

BTW, that's why I sold the Santana 3030. I had fixed her up well enough that she probably could have made it across to Hawaii. But I didn't trust her any more, and I know from 5 days experience what it's like to be alone on a boat you don't trust in rigorous conditions.

I'd trust her on the Bay, I sailed the boat for several months, including two Farallones races and she was fine. So I sold her with good conscience to a guy who will almost certainly never take her out the Gate.. But the trust was gone.

That's why I bought the SC27. How many SC27's have done this race? Lots.

 

[Ergo]

BTW. The genesis of my dead engine and dying batteries was also water infiltrating the key switch and corroding the wiring harness and shorting out the other parts of the system. I've since moved the engine control panel down below. I can't monitor the instruments anymore but I'm pretty sure the damn thing is going to stay dry. I've heard that some skippers have also moved their fuel intakes below for the same reason. Water in the fuel is also a very bad thing.

The requirement that cockpits be self-draining is for real. I'm considering installing two four inch pipes thru the transom to speed the process. In an offshore gale the cockpit occasionally becomes a bath tub. Look at your cockpit. Imagine it full of water - I mean FULL. Where is the water going to go if it can't drain quickly?

Are we having fun yet?

Bill Merrick

 

[cr1]

Bill and Alan,
Thanks much for the thought provoking and emotional messages. I laughed out loud about the "pretty blue lights, wonder what that's all about?" But only because I can relate. The longest I've been out there has been a week but strange things happen don't they?
The sharing of heartbreak felt (during and after) not being able to complete a dreamed of goal is deeply appreciated. I can kind of relate that to one of trying to complete a trip up Mt.Whitney on my first day hike. I didn't make that one but I did the next two times. Overcoming the anxiety of not accomplishing the feat is at times greater than the reality of the task.

Rambling,
Rich
Horizon
Contessa 26
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[Alchera]

Bill & Alan,

Incredible stories, thank you so much for posting them. I know it couldn't have been easy. We all go offshore as best prepared as we can be and hoping for the best, but sometimes it just doesn't happen the way we planned. All of us have very similar fears when we go offshore, some of us are lucky that nothing serious materializes. Some of us are not so lucky. Your posts are excellent reminders that what we are doing is not a lark, it's serious business. When things are good, it can be really fun. When they go bad, it can be a nightmare, and a life threatening one. To those who are thinking of doing the STP for the first time, read those posts and think about them hard. Hopefully your preparations will be the better for it.

Mark/Alchera

 

[BobJ]

Bill and Alan,

Thanks guys. I'm sure you each thought awhile before writing those posts. They add a depth and perspective to this endeavor that is important for us to understand.

Despite these past experiences, I hope each of you participates in the race again and has such a great time that you want to do it yet again.

With great respect,
Bob J.