Long Beach to Cabo San Lucas Race Day 1

by Rich Roberts on 7 Nov 2010 Long Beach to Cabo San Lucas Race - Doug Baker's Akela, the biggest and fastest boat in the fleet, led the way out of town in Long Beach Yacht Club's biennial race to Cabo San Lucas Saturday, and then the tricky part started.

Although a chart shows the course running slightly east of south directly down to the tip of Mexico's Baja California peninsula, the 804 nautical miles are filled with enough subtleties of weather to challenge the best navigators in the world.

That's why Brack Duker brought Adrienne Cahalan up from Australia again to find the best way for his Santa Cruz 70, Holua, to go, as she has done for others in four Volvo (formerly Whitbread) world ocean races, 18 Sydney-Hobarts and a round-the-world speed record for the late Steve Fossett's monstrous Cheyenne catamaran.

So what did Cahalan think after studying the weather prospects before the start?

'We're not looking at more than 14 knots of [wind],' she said, 'with the wind [from the] southeast before it goes southwest and we run with it.'

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That's not what Akela's navigator, Ernie Richau, wanted to hear after anticipating conditions earlier in the week that would allow the Reichel/Pugh 78 to break OEX's race record of 2 days 22 hours 50 minutes 9 seconds set in the previous race in 2008 when Baker's Magnitude 80 lost its mast on the second day. But he had to agree.

A few minutes before the start Richau said, 'It's not looking like a record now.'

Three hours after the start Akela was in front but, according to tracking by iBoat, averaging 10.8 knots---too slow for the record.

But after their bad luck two years ago, the Akela guys weren't taking any chances from the start.

On a Long Beach postcard day---clear blue sky with puffy white clouds on the horizon, 76 degrees F. and 9-10 knots of south breeze just teasing whitecaps---the race committee set a line off Belmont Veterans Memorial Pier the length of a football field but square to the wind, not to the course.

That drew every boat except Akela to the pin (left) end of the line, closer to the exit from the outer harbor between the east end of the breakwater and Island Chaffee. Akela instead trailed the other four boats up the line, then took a higher course with clear sailing that put them in front well before exiting the bay.

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Bob Lane's Andrews 63, Medicine Man, did the opposite. After a so-so start that left them in the others' bad air, they bore away slightly offwind into clear breeze and picked up a puff that allowed them to clear the island and fall into step with Akela toward the horizon.

Meanwhile, Ricardo Brockmann's R/P 52 Vincitore (translation: Victory) from Acapulco, led everybody across the start line but steadily fell behind everyone, including Holua and Per Peterson's Andrews 68, Alchemy.

The boats' positions may be tracked continuously by iBoat with a two-hour delay to protect tactical security. Also, by 8 a.m. PDT each day each boat must report its 7 a.m. PDT position to the race communications officer, who will forward the positions and standings to all boats.

Three hours after the start, Akela was tracked at 771.9 nautical miles from the finish, averaging 10.8 knots, followed by Medicine Man, less than two miles behind at 773.5; Alchemy, 774.8; Holua, 774.7, and Vincitore, 776.0.

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Standings

(Positions at 3 p.m. Saturday; PHRF Off-Wind handicap times in seconds per mile)

1. Akela (Reichel/Pugh 78/minus-120), Doug Baker, Long Beach, Calif., 771.9 miles to go. 2. Medicine Man (Andrews 63/minus-99), Bob Lane, Long Beach, Calif., 773.5.
3. Holua (Santa Cruz 70/minus-87), Brack Duker, Marina del Rey, Calif., 774.7.
4. Alchemy (Andrews 68/minus-87), Per Peterson, Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., 774.8.
5. Vincitore (Reichel/Pugh 52/minus-102), Ricardo Brockmann, Acapulco, Mexico, 776.0.

www.lbyc.org

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