The record for double-handing the Transpacific Yacht Race from Los Angeles to Honolulu has been broken. At 4:38:35 am HST today, Philippe Kahn and Mark “Crusty” Christensen, crossed the Diamond Head finish line in the Open 50, Pegasus 50, in a record time of 7 days, 19 hours, 38 minutes and 35 seconds. They shaved over two and a half days off of the previous record set by Howard Gordon and Jay Crum in 2001 also with an Open 50, Etranger in the most enduring and greatest ocean race in the world covering 2,225 nautical miles from Los Angeles to Honolulu.

Pegasus sets the new Transpac double-handed world record!

See complete Transpac Press Release..

Last sunset at Sea, 100 miles out

The bird at the top of the mast

The Otter Box

Philippe uses MotionX-GPS on the iPhone 3G and is sharing with you the following waypoint:

Name: Track across the Pacific

Date: Jul 12, 2009 9:23 pm

Location:

Latitude: 22º 20′ 12″ N

Longitude: 155º 53′ 52″ W

Altitude: 5 ft

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MotionX-GPS Waypoint: Track across the Pacific

Here is a chart of our race so far. We are on track to beat the long standing record in a similar boat set in 2001 by ov er two days! That’s more than a 20% gain. We’re pleased but focussed on the last 12 hours of this race. They count just as much as the prior 168 hours!

Philippe uses MotionX-GPS on the iPhone 3G and is sharing with you the following waypoint:

150 miles to go, finish line on the bow

Name: Layline to Molokai Channel

Date: Jul 12, 2009 7:42 pm

Location:

Latitude: 22º 35′ 01″ N

Longitude: 155º 37′ 12″ W

Altitude: 9 ft

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From what we can tell, with our electrical back, around 9 am PST ( 6 am HST) is a good guess for our finish, just inside 8 days, something like 7 day, 20 hours and something. Sunrise in the Molokai channel.

There is still a lot of sailing to be done. That’s a reasonable guess.

Engine fix and Katayama-San’ lucky sextant returns

Update: We expect/hope to be fully recovered by Noon. Then we’ll jibe for a lay-line to the tip of Molokai and have our final jibe there. Trying to minimize jibes. Big relief.

Progress: Sailing along fast. Found faulty regulator and alternator. Good start. Thank you for all the great support!

All down – Down to flashlighs, mechanical compass and add-on batteries for iPhone MotionX and hand held iridium. Trying to fix.

Hello,

Philippe uses MotionX-GPS on the iPhone 3G and is sharing with you the following waypoint:

Pitch black night, pure feel sailing in 20+ knots. Crusty working fixing batteries now.

Name: Night falling, batteries not charging

Date: Jul 11, 2009 11:10 pm

Location:

Latitude: 23º 16′ 58″ N

Longitude: 151º 48′ 20″ W

Altitude: 0 ft

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Philippe and Mark have lost electrical and comms. They are sailing full steam to Honolulu as they are trying to troubleshoot. One emergency sat phone working. Sailing fast. Using the brail method!

Hello,

Philippe uses MotionX-GPS on the iPhone 3G and is sharing with you the following waypoint:

Name: Start day 7
Date: Jul 11, 2009 1:26 pm
Notes: Jul 11, 2009 1:00 pm
Location:
Latitude: 24º 28′ 40″ N
Longitude: 149º 52′ 15″ W
Altitude: 0 ft

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Hello,

Philippe uses MotionX-GPS on the iPhone 3G and is sharing with you the following waypoint:

Name: Start day 7
Date: Jul 11, 2009 1:26 pm
Notes: Jul 11, 2009 1:00 pm
Location:
Latitude: 24º 28′ 40″ N
Longitude: 149º 52′ 15″ W
Altitude: 0 ft

Click on this link to display the waypoint in Google Maps. This link will be valid until Aug 10, 2009 1:31 PM PDT.

If you are viewing this message on your iPhone or iPod touch, use this link to view the waypoint in the Maps application.

MotionX-GPS Waypoint: Start day 7

Jibe and Sunset

Squalls at Sunset

Trade Winds, Squalls, and Surfing!

Tradewind sailing with building squalls, pointing right to Diamond Head

Building Squall

Today we are living within the realm of Squalls. Squalls in the the Northeast sub-tropical Pacific are a bit different. They are small, concentrated and powerful. The rain lasts about 20 minutes under them if you’re stationary. We’re not.

I love squalls in Honolulu: refreshing, cleansing and replenishing for island precious water.

On Pegasus 50, we move fast at more than half of the squall’s speed. My personal interpretation of North East Pacific Squalls is that they are caused by evaporation with subsequent cooling of the rising air and travel with the tradewinds. During their build-up phase, they mostly “suck” air into them as they are highly active building convective systems. The upper limit comes when the ultra moist air reaches adiabatic balance. Therefore, if you are in front of such a building squall, you loose a lot of wind velocity and get a nasty right shift, but if you have one behind you, she “sucks air” that heads you if you are on starboard jibe with a great boost in velocity. The longer you ride that squall the better. Mark caught a short video of one that he was riding to a max speed of 28 knots of wind and 22 knots of boat speed this afternoon . Check it out, passing right behind Pegasus 50. Mark is steering and filming with his MotionX iPhone 3GS in one hand.

As the the evening cools, squalls get morphed into the opposite. The building convective energy gets pulled from under the squall around midnight, and then all these squalls start collapsing as major angry “puffers”. It takes 12 to 18 hours to build a squall and they colapse in about 4 hours. These are efficient entropic thermodynamic systems, so a lot of concentrated energy dissipates very rapidly. Colapsing squalls will have winds of up to 45 knots in the front of them. That’s serious business. Tonight’s night watch could be interesting, but one thing at a time.

We are in an area of clear now, chewing the miles. Life is good aboard the mighty Pegasus. Dinner time soon!

Windy tonight. On edge and don’t trust the pilot on 20+ and big waves. No horizon. Been steering for 3 hours. Crusty is sound asleep. I can’t believe that he trusts me!

First Real Sunset

The Sun is back, just to set in a glorious way. Explosive! Now into the dark night.

Pegasus has been chewing up the miles and we are very lucky for that. Our last two days were 305 and 295 nautical miles respectfully. We like our heading with a lot of West and a bit of South in it, averaging about 255 true. Tactically and strategically we’re able to achieve our goals.

However, we never take anything for granted and keep on crunching a lot of weather information. We’ve been consistently reading 1019 on the barometer, which means that we are sailing down the 1019 isobar. We feel very comfortable with that.

At this morning’s schedule, we saw that a lot of boats were heading North. That would mean a rapidly rising barometer and ultimately a “spin into the high.” So we like what we are doing. All the automated routing programs seem to point to a Northerly track. We’re contrarians and disagree. We’ll know soon enough.

We’re settling into that routine where Crusty watches the days and I watch the nights. It’s almost like our day to day schedules! Except that we’re riding the wind fast to Paradise!

Fast Tracks on the Great Pacific Ocean

We are clearly entering the realm of the tradewinds. The natural path to Hawaii and it’s rich seafarer’s culture. The ancient Hawaians were voyaging and navigating thousand of nautical miles in the Pacific ocean while the West was lost in endless gyrations. As we approach the gateway to Polynesia, we must show respect.

Respectfully asking Kane and his brother Kaneloa to grant us safe passage into the tradewind to Honolulu and the house by the Wailupe Streams. All of our technology and our strength can take us there. But without the supernatural we are nothing. As Ulysses found out painfully.

2 AM Update:
These clouds puff or suck. They all look the same at night. With this overcast sky, there are clouds that play with our minds. Especially as I stand watch alone at night, one hand on the helm, the rest of my senses fully in listening mode. As we are sailing downwind on starboard the clouds that matter are on our right back quarter. Like yesterday, the clouds are tricky. Not that I can change the outcome much.. Speed or becalmed. I noticed that I can start to feel some cold air from the puffers. That makes sense: they suck colder upper atmospheric air and “puff it out in front of them”. The suckers seem to do the opposite and becalm a large area around them.

All is well aboard the mighty Pegasus. Challenging sailing conditions. That’s what we enjoy.

Sailing at Night

Making Tracks

Tactically and strategically, we feel that we are far enough south, sitting on the 1018 isobar, hunting for that elusive 1020 and sticking to it. When we eventually find it, and when the shift is right, we’ll start jybing and surfing our way to Honolulu.

After the full night’s shift I finally got 4 hours of sleep this morning. Crusty is happy sailing the boat at day-time. He’s hopping around and getting real busy with lots of odds and ends jobs. I can hear his “paws” on the cabintop while I am trying to fall asleep.

Today I thought about the video camera on my 3GS and used it on the bow to put up a little ambiance video. I called it “Making Tracks”. It’s short and shows how it feels to sail this boat in moderate winds. She’s fast and wet.

The sky is one hundred percent overcast. No sunrise, sunset, stars or moon. It’s essentially a huge extension of the California coastal fog. For now we see it as sun-protection. We’re happy! Pegasus is making tracks towards the barn.

Making Tracks part 1

Making Tracks part 2

A quiet and relatively slow night. Around 10 PM it became clear that the wind was backing off and that we were entering the “Pacific High doldrums ridging zone”. That means large oscillations and significant wind speed changes. These conditions don’t wear you out physically, but they do mentally. In fact it’s all about patience. At 11 PM we decided that I’d stand watch until sunrise as I tend to be the Night Owl and Crusty would pick-up during day time. In the dark.

The full moon is out, but there is 100% cloud cover, The wind is oscillating between NW and NE. It’s tough to take pictures in the dark! MotionX-GPS is guiding the way.

On watch on deck with WiFi live, we have perfectly watertight Otter cases for our two iPhone 3GS. One for each. With the new magnetic compass and iPod integration it’s awesome.

Take a look at this screen:
- The Compass points in the direction that we are travelling. (225°)
- The Blue arrow points to the finish line. (251°)
- VMG of 12.6 kts (Velocity Made Good) is the rate at which Pegasus is moving towards the finish line.

With Pegasus maintaining this VMG we will finish in 171 hours from now or just over 7 days.

Sail changes and more sail changes

After we licked our wounds, we made sail changes all day. With just the two of us and a lot of sail area, each change is a major project. Therefore, we think before we act, and we triple check everything. The one who’s steering watches for the one who’s on the fore-deck. I took that picture with MotionX-GPS, while steering, as Mark was hoisting the Code 3 sail.

We spent hours talking about the weather charts as well as our own observations from the boat. Mark and I agree that we should dive deep south to find some compressions with more wind. The weather forecast doesn’t agree with us. It rarely does, but we don’t agree with the weather forecast and we have good reasons for that. Consider the following: we carry a highly accurate Vaisala Barometer. This barometer employs 3 different high-end pressure sensors, has the algorithmics built-in to always pick the two best sensors and average them. This is a high precision instrument and we named her Kulani. Well, Kulani is telling us that we are on the 1018 isobar and all the forecasts and weather charts are telling us that we are on the 1015 isobar. It’s kind of like the weatherman telling you that it is raining, but the sun is shining out of your window. So, we’ll follow our own science and sense our way down that 1018 isobar.

We now have a lot of sail area up: full main, staysail and large, strong Cuben-Fiber code 3 tight luff headsail. We’re going fast into the night. We’re three hours from Sunset and getting ready to sail through one more wet and dark night. Turning the corner of this ridging high pressure system fast is what we want to do.

Fly Pegasus Fly through the night!

Where no iPhone has gone before!

Mark and I split the night. I stood watch until 2 am, Mark took over until sunrise. We are both wet, cold, battered by waves, yet happy as can be: We sailed fast and smart.

At one in the morning we put up the big Genoa, cracked the sheets and stood on 14 to 16 knots. Fast in the night. We saw lights from racers ahead of us, then on our beam, then behind us, Then no more.

I saved a life last night. I was hit on the chest by a giant flying fish. I looked at it flapping in the dark amidst the fluorescent krill brought on by the large waves submerging the boat periodically. So, I made a dive for the fish on my way, hit the  auto-pilot switch, grabbed the fish, felt a violent right turn,  and I got washed to leeward by a wave. Bloodied nose, bruised knee. The pilot didn’t engage. But I saved the fish. I wasn’t going to eat it. It was a male so no Tobiko. Now this fish has quite a story to tell his fellow fish. Mark slept down bellow through all of this.

Pushing hard for the record after a wild, wet and exhausting night.

We are getting ready for a wild and wet night. Now the wind is gusting to 25 knots and the seas have grown to 9 feet. Check out this picture taken from the nav station.

Right before the start, one hour on our way, our hydraulics failed. That’s the system that helps cant the keel. It’s a must have. Our shore team hustled and made miracles happen. They had just 50 minutes because 10 minutes before the start they have to be off the boat with Crusty and I the only souls on the mighty Pegasus. By the time they hopped into our escort boat, we had half of our hydraulic systems back up. That’s enough to take us to Honolulu safely. Thank goodness for redundant systems, and thanks to Gilesie and Zan for a miracle fix.

Now it is just the two of us sailing on our way to Honolulu. We’re upwind because we must leave the top of Catalina to port. This is the only mark of the course. Next stop, the Diamond Head lighthouse.

We had a good start, just where and when we wanted: At the boat end 10 seconds after the gun. We are now happily sailling upwind, half way to Catalina. Crusty is steering.

The start is at 1PM PST. We leave the dock at 10:30 AM so that we get there in ample time. Our last moment decisions will be which sails to take or not to take. The rule goes: “If we don’t take them, we’ll need them, if we take them we will not need them”. That’s mainly for the the very light air sails. They are typically large sails that we have to carry all the way to Honolulu, like useless furniture if we don’t use them. However, there is an exorcism quality to this decision. For now, the first 48 hours are forecasted to be wet and wild. Kanaloa welcoming us to the great Pacific Ocean. That’s good luck!

Yesterday we tested our upwind sails off Long Beach. All is well. Here is a picture of Pegasus 50 charging downwind with the industrial background of Long Beach.

On-board all of our equipment is state of the art. MotionX-GPS will pin-point our position accurately and reliably from the Start to the finish at Diamond Head.

Yet one of the most important pieces of equipment on-board is my trusted 1979 Tamaya Sextant. For tradition’s sake (a good thing), the Transpac race organizers wants each boat to submit four completely reduced sight at the finish line. In other words, at least 4 times during the race you have determine your position on the ocean solely by reference to the Stars, Planets,  Moon and Sun. An endangered art. A beautiful skill to have. However one that takes time a lot of practice to learn. Because there are only two of us on board, that’s my job.

Mark Rudiger taught me the basics of celestial navigation during the many passages that he and I sailed together. Navigation is a skill passed on, navigator to navigator. Especially celestial navigation. Mark and I sailed and won two Transpacs together in 2001 and 2003. Mark, this record attempt is for you.

The principles of celestial navigation are pretty simple: Given three distinct celestial objects in the sky, at any given time if you measure their elevation over the horizon, there is only once place on the planet where you could be. For example at 10 PM tonight as you watched fireworks, if you saw Saturn 19° 32′, Arcturus 62° 55 and Vega 57° 54′ above the horizon, you would be close to Long Beach, exactly at latitude 33°2′ North and longitude 118°26′ West. All you need is an instrument to make those very accurate measurements together with the tools to “reduce those measurements” to your exact estimated position.

I have a “lucky Sextant”. She was made in Tokyo in 1979 and I got her from Captain, Katayama, a retiring successful Japanese merchant Captain.  Katayama’s last command was the mighty Takara  hailing from Yokohama. Katayama told me of many “lucky” voyages across the Pacific, mostly between Yokohama and San Francisco, taking Japanese cars and electronics to America and returning with American farm products together with Harley Davidson motorcycles (his favorite) and American Pop culture icons. When Captain Katayama retired, he wanted to make sure that his “lucky sextant” would be in good hands and shown proper respect. (All sailors are superstitious. I am). So Katayama placed an advert on eBay. I answered and we connected. I have several sextants. This is the one that I want to take with me across the Pacific Ocean: Katayama’s 1979 lucky sextant.

Pegasus 50 is at the dock right by the gigantic 100 footer Alfa Romeo crewed by over 20 seasoned professionals. We look good right there. Our goal is to get there within 72 hours of Alfa Romeo.

Now it is time for the last minute preparations. We’ll take the boat for a quick sail and then rest and get some sleep after a delicious crew dinner.

While the North Eastern Pacific weather settles nicely, the team is putting the finishing touches to Pegasus 50. We could have a fast race. The record is a possibility. It may be windy. Preparation is all the more important.

Now we must make sure that all systems are a go. This is a very advanced and complex boat. There are a lot of systems to check: we have a canting keel, 6 separate water ballast tanks, two rudders, two moving dagger board foils, duplicate wireless networking systems, two satellite communications systems… it goes on and on.

For optimal speed, doing a last minute thorough bottom clean is a big plus. At the same time we verify the integrity of the canting keel mechanism and all the movable foils. This picture shows how polished our bottom is before she re-enters the water.

Pegasus 50 is now back in the water. Personally I am spending the day working here in Santa Cruz. Crusty is in Long Beach unloading everything from the boat, cleaning everything out, and then reloading everything very carefully – right down to the forks and spoons. Our sailor’s food gets loaded at the last moment. It’s all frozen in dry iced day-boxes. Right now our frozen food is sitting in a rented freezer in Long Beach.

Because there are only two of us sailing, the logistics are that much more important. Any preparation before the start of the race pays immense dividends during the race when we are so busy sailing the boat, just the two of us.

Tomorrow we get to go for the last minute shopping items. Crusty needs a pair of sandals and I need a different hat. Important details.

I will fly my plane to Long Beach late tonight after work. It’s just an hour’s flight.

Now we are running routes and the different forecasting models are very different as you can see from the chart. Wildly different. In fact I don’t believe any of them. The great news is that the weather on the Pacific is settling. The upper level blockages are dissipating and we may be in for a more classic July North-East Pacific weather pattern.

I have to confess that I have been arguing with myself as to the playlists for the soundtrack during the next 8 days. Lots of deBussy, ravel, Faure and of course Iz!

The boat will make it to Long Beach today and I will post some pictures soon.

Today for the first time I took a serious look at the weather. What a mess! In 11 crossings I have never seen such messy weather patterns in the usually very predictable Pacific.

The weather chart says it all. Instead of one beautiful strong, stable high pressure centered somewhere 800 nautical miles from San Francisco, there are now 10 different weather systems playing with each other. Yes, climate is changing! This makes it all the more interesting for the Transpac. We start Sunday the 5th at 1 PM out of Long Beach, California. I’d love to celebrate the 14th of July or Bastille Day in Honolulu watching the sunset by Diamond Head. But a lot has to happen before that!

The Pacific has been highly unusual over the last 30 days. In particular, sea level pressure has averaged below normal off the California coast and much below normal over the central Pacific, northwest of Hawaii. This pattern has resulted in a weak Pacific high, ridged in a north-south orientation.

That means that the wind has been a right-shifter along the California coast and weakened the strong North Westerlies that are typical of the first two days of Transpac. But, things may be changing fast.

My bet is that by the end of the week we will see consolidation of the high given the trends on the 500mb chart and as a consequence a more typical, fairly windy race. But it could go either way!

The Boat will make it to Long Beach this evening. The delivery team is making good progress.

Our goal for this race is the double-handed Transpac record. Last year we established a new double handed record from San Francisco to Hawaii. This year we start from Los Angeles.

Just two of us: Mark Christensen and myself, and 2250 nautical miles of open ocean between the start and Diamond Head!

Boat Project management:
David Giles, Zan Drejes, Bruce Mahoney,

Onshore Pegasus Racing team:
Zan Drejes, David Gilles, Bruce Mahoney, Mark Golsh, Jana Madrigali, Seth Larkin

Online Presence:
Caleb Dolister, Peter Spaulding, Arthur Kinsolving, Joe Dolister

Sailor’s food:
Bonnie Willis