Windchaser's 2009 24 hour Heaven Can Wait race

by Mark Cherrington on 7 Oct 2009
This year's Heaven Can Wait 24 hour race was GREAT. Sure we had our moments of doubt and 'at what point do we decide it's too hard?' what with the rain, the cold, the predicted high winds, the need to protect the crew -- but in the end, we were having too much fun.

We accidentally got a near-perfect start. Evan McHugh, on the helm for the first half lap, promised us a conservative start, then with 60 seconds to go and nowhere to head except for the line, had us over just seconds after the start signal, and right on the start boat -- nicely to windward on starboard.

Wind really made for perfect sailing over the full 24 hours; nothing over 27 knots (for about 10 minutes in a rain squall), nothing much under 5 knots; we never stopped moving (though we saw a few boats parked north of Toronto, where winds seem to go to die).

Our main aim was to have fun, which for us meant keeping as many of the crew as as possible, as warm and dry as possible, well fed and reasonably well rested. A pre-prepared hot meal from crew Michelle Havenstein (who also designed the 2009 Heaven Can Wait posters) and early morning bacon and eggs courtesy of Janene Porter, late addition Mitch and Michelle kept us very well fed.

Happily the rain stopped by early evening; even saw a few stars, and the light cloud cover seemed to diffuse the moonlight so there was plenty of visibility. Our wet weather gear even dried in the overnight breeze.

For the first time in an HCW (this was our 4th) we had a ding-dong battle with another boat throughout the race -- for the whole 24 hours we were within 20 minutes of Mark Hastings' Try Flying. Lead changed back and forth, but we managed to hold him off for the last 9 hours.

Mark came back from being 20 minutes behind to just a couple of minutes in the building breeze at the end. Another 30-40 minutes, and he'd probably have had us.

Best gadget on the boat: our ASUS eepc netbook with USB GPS set up as a chartplotter (thanks to James Wearing --father of ace crew member Jake -- for his help in setting this up).

It meant we always knew where we were, even when we couldn't see buoys or nav marks. With boats pulling out due to poor visibility and resulting uncertainty as to the location of buoys and nav marks, we felt much more confident that we always knew where we were. We could use the chartplotter to confirm that we were where we thought we were, and the headings to the next marks.

It's interesting how time contracts and telescopes in an event like this. After just an hour, one of our crew remarked 'you know we have another 23 hours of this!'. Then it was 1700 and we'd completed our 1st lap (in right on 4 hours) -- and it helped that the rain died as soon as we got to Mannering Park and headed back up the lake with the wind at our backs: instant rise in temperature and crew spirits.

Then all of a sudden it was dark, then midnight, then time to put the clocks forward at 0200.

I opted to keep the helm until 0330 (new time) just so we could make sure we'd knocked Try Flying off the last time (both Evan and Jake had already had a turn), before heading below for a sleep.

Next thing I was listening to the 0605 scheds (slept through Blake's wakeup call), and dozing off through some of them -- and very happy to hear the news that Try Flying was now 20 minutes behind us...

The next five hours was dedicated to making damn sure that they stayed there.

Our final position was just north of Wangi Point heading north -- just over 103 Nm in a 'straight line' around the course -- with a total sailed distance of 130 Nm over the 24 hours. By far our best distance for the event ever.

Thanks to everyone who took part and made it such a great event. Hopefully we'll see this build to get many more local boats, along with significant numbers of out of lake boats once the channel is sorted (which it most certainly is NOT at present -- we had a very stressful experience using our keel to dredge more of the dropover Friday night).

We'll be back next year!