Whatever floats your boat...

Hard to believe, but the boat goes in the water at noon today. Bottom is faired and epoxied; bottom paint by 0800, then we have a whole six hours or so to load and stow five (six?) truckloads of gear. Straits Marine are A-one, and many thanks to Ocean Rigging for expediting their work on the mast. We'll try to get some photos posted before we leave, but after the race start, we don't have the bandwidth to upload photos on the sat phone. We'll be able to post some photos when we get to Maui. After a bite of dinner tonight, it's off to Victoria, where we hope to arrive about 0200. Most importantly, we'll be in Victoria in time for the dock party! Alo-ha!

Maui here we come

WOW!!

We're going to make it after all.

Due to a fantastic job by everyone at Straits Marine in Steveston, we are going to be able to make the race.

In May, during a casual afternoon sail, we bumped a rock between Bowen Island and Hut rock.
I had been through this area maybe 30 times previously and was well aware where the rocks were but, even with the chart right beside me, I misjudged the distance.
It didn't seem like an earth shattering impact – more like hitting a log but we apparently did some significant damage.
We pulled the boat out to inspect it and it didn't seem too bad so we waited until our scheduled pre-race clean and paint.

When Turicum was pulled at Straits, we started exploring the damage and found that things were much more serious than originally believed.

The people at Straits have worked tirelessly to get us ready for the race and the job that they have done is extraordinary.
Turicum is now much stronger than original and we have the utmost faith in her ability to once again show the other boats the way to Maui.
We expect to be in the water Monday morning and be on our way to Victoria for the start and of course, the pre-race activities.

We will be trying to keep up a daily Blog to try to give people an idea of what is going on aboard.
Les will be our onboard “blogger” and we will be sending our messages to June who will be uploading them to our site.

You will also be able to watch our progress on the Vic-Maui site via the race tracker.

Cheers, from the Crew.
Gunnar
John
Les
Naomi
Tim
Don
Johan
Hale

Straits Video

Some fantastic video from the crew on Astral Plane.
The boat you see near the end of the video is Turicum with our jury rigged 4th reef heading up to Sisters.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6R22JdoU1pI&feature=player_embedded

Crew view -- Mark

All been said in previous replies. The only thing I can add is that there’s no boat I’d rather be on in those conditions than Turicum.
Thanks Hale.

Mark

Crew view -- Don

Ditto on many of the remarks made by others. For me, the conditions were as bad as I've seen and worse when you consider that it was sustained for many hours, not just a squall line blowing through.

What impressed me most was the level of calm and co-operation evident amongst all the crew and leadership. Everyone was 'in it' till the end constantly working at solving the problems.

Great experience!

Don

Crew view -- Carl

It's definitely an understatement to say we had anything less than severe weather! Storm/Hurricane force winds, record boat speeds, 4-5 meter waves in short frequency, Coast Guard rescues, crossing lee shores, & 90% race abandonment has the obvious marks of stories to tell for years!! Beyond that however, I think the reason for our success was the calm diligence of the crew and adapting to the circumstances. I can remember one evening offshore we were deciding what to run with overnight and went for 'Thunder Chicken' (when nothing else will do!) and within minutes of hoist realizing we had to douse what we just put up as the winds had actually picked up and changed direction. The plan that was executed so well backfired just as quickly and we had all crew (less the driver) pull this now giant drouge out of the water in 70 foot seas - an event that still sticks out in my mind today. It was still the best decision as if we would have had to do that at night it would have made things MUCH more difficult (we ended up running the #2 headsail). What I am trying to convey with this story is the practice of: Don't get into what you can't get out of. Many of the boats at the start put up spinnakers and there was a point at the beginning where we could (maybe) have put up an asymmetrical, but that is a lot of sail in a gale. If we would have been aggressive like some of the other boats we could have had a blowout of the spin or main or (probably worse) is we could have created a very expensive drogue as per my offshore example and would have been part of the 90% abandonment with increased risk of injury to the crew. Being a relatively new crew I fully believe we sailed the boat to the best of our abilities in the conditions provided and I would consider it a privilege to sail with any of you in the future - although it looks like I will not be able to join you on any further races before 'the big one'. I wish everyone the best on their journey to Maui. My wife, daughter, and I hope to see you guys off the night before you leave.




Regards, Carl

Crew comments -- Johan

I have seen a lot of critical comments thrown in from the "Peanut Gallery" .....

As for myself, I had a great time!! This is the stuff that you just cannot learn only out of a book!

It was comforting to know that Turicum had been through this kind of weather before , and that most of the crew and the Skipper had extensive offshore experience.

What better circumstances can you ask for to get a great learning experience?? It was one that I will remember for a long time .

I certainly appreciate being able to have sailed with such a competent and confident crew.

Thanks everybody!

Johan