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FINAL COUNT DOWN

7/23/2018

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Chasing ghosts? Or chasing our tail?
The last couple hundred miles to go and we are bow on Oahu and pressed hard in a broad reach. This race is scored using a handicap system where boats with faster designs have time added to their elapsed time based on a mathematical formula. This makes the racing crew vs crew as opposed to just who can afford the fastest boat. Where this gets a bit wonky and tough for those on shore to understand is how that translates to what they might be seeing on the race tracker. Right now we are trying to catch a boat that is 7 hours ahead of us, and stay ahead of a boat that is two hours behind us.
These time differences are already calculated on the tracker and are real time. BUT, because these are corrected times and not just elapsed times, the real position and the corrected positions are two very different things. This is very evident in the case of the two boats we are most concerned about. For example, the boat that is 7 hours ahead of us, we owe 9 hours to. So in the real physical world that boat is two hours off our stern! The other boat, that is correcting to be two hours behind us is in reality about 100 miles ahead of us and will finish about half a day before we do. Confused yet? Imagine how hard all this is to work out here on the boat with sailors who aren’t just a bit confused what shift or time of day it is, but who have legitimate discussions in the dark about what day it might be!

Life on board is good. We are in steady wind and sailing fast. At night we experience frequent squalls. These are cloud bursts common in the tropics that approach from behind with heavy rain and very heavy winds. During the day the heat soars to around 32C inside the boat making it really hard to sleep. We had so few hours on The Fugitive before we started, we really need to give ourselves credit for how quickly we have learned her systems and how she sails. Our crew work has been really good and we never hesitate to execute sail changes, gybes and peels in heavy air. The amount of helm time each of us gets is probably more than the average racing skipper in Vancouver in a whole year.

Alie and Kevin have improved as drivers a hundred fold. The change has been impressive. I remember only about a week ago I handed the helm to Kevin around 2am and he said “this might take some coaching, I’ve never driven with a spinnaker in the dark before”. Two nights ago Kevin was pulling surfs at 13+ knots in the pitch black and complaining he hadn’t quite got it right!


Crew updates. Ian still has enough dress shirts in his arsenal to be the best dressed member, however he has most of the buttons undone in the heat so he does have a little of that Cuban street guitarist look going.

Ben always seems to have an ear to what is going on. I think sleep will be in his future once we are docked. He pulled a chest muscle last night while driving but it seems to have less pain today and hasn’t kept him away from sailing. Speaking of injuries, Dave’s back seems to have recovered enough that he’s a fully functional crew member again. We did contact our medical support about the injury when it happened. Aparentnly they were excellent and responded right away. Ben said the only thing that took a long time was downloading the email signature in the guys communications. It takes 6 minutes for an emoji to load. I guess it’s about the same for a signature?!


Tegan continues to “burn his tan on” much to his mother’s chagrin. He hums when he drives which is fun because I figured out I can place an ear worm early on in the shift and most times I’ll hear that tune hummed a couple hours later once he’s on the helm. Hope he likes Wheels on the Bus!

Alie is doing an amazing job. She was so green (rookie, not seasick) when she signed onto this adventure and she has rocked every aspect of it. She still eats a lot. That hasn’t changed. She’s eating right now in fact, but that’s normal, it’s because she’s awake. She rarely eats in her sleep.

Back to Dave for a sec. Mark, you’ll be happy to know we have convinced Dave to fly big jets so you can retire with appropriate comfort. You’re welcome!

Also, Dave was so tired last night he hallucinated he saw a cat on the cabin top. Every so often Ben meows softly when Dave is near him just to keep him guessing. Also....considering the decision to fly jets....I wonder if cat hallucinations are something he should mention...And lastly, Sparkles the cat. She’s doing great! What a trooper, 1800 miles of sailing and she hasn’t yet shredded a spinnaker or Ian’s beard!

Oh wait, before Sparkles the cat, we still have Kevin. Kevin is great to have on my shift with Tegan. To pass the time Tegan will ask questions to which he may or may not know the answer. Which in a google-free world can be interesting. But he best part is that Kevin usually knows the answer! So when Tegan asks something out of boredom like “John, what is the difference between a Ray and a vector” Kevin will say something like “a ray is a line emitting from a point without a distance or direction while a vector has a finishing poi without a distance or direction while a vector has a finishing point giving the line length and direction in a two dimensional plane”. This is so great because normally my response would have been “Tegan, pass the M&M's"
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Tomorrow as we head for the finish I’ll talk about navigation and how Ian found Hawaii. Unless we miss Hawaii in which case I’ll talk about the music we listen to or something like that. Also, it’s my intention to go Facebook live as we finish if there is cell coverage out there :)

Sigh that john guy sure can go on eh?
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SAIL INVENTORY SUNDAY

7/22/2018

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Happy Sunday Fugitive Followers, as a special treat today John Lee is taking us through the sails currently on board....the rest we will fill you in on at a later time....we go now to John a little earlier in the day, somewhere in the Pacific...

It occurs to me as I roll out of my bunk at 10am a couple hours ahead of my noon shift that one really needs to be a morning person to do this. Five shifts every two days means five mornings every two do this. Five shifts every two days means five mornings every two days. So far I’ve had somewhere around 30 mornings in 11days all of them after under three hours sleep, most of them after two. The crew headed down is always irritatingly happy and one has to put aside their morning grumpies as they try to negotiate the rolling boat and get clothes on. This has become easier as the weather has improved as what we sleep in is what we sail in. Actually, that’s not true, I haven’t seen Dave’s Santa pajamas on deck yet.

Anyway, today I thought I’d get a bit geeky for anyone on shore wondering about our sail options and choices. Let’s call today Sail Inventory Sunday! Catchy! As long as today is in fact Sunday...First off we have a main sail. It stays up all the time, because, well, it’s the mail sail! It has three reef points which are means to make it smaller should it get too windy to carry all of its power. So far we haven’t had to reef in this race.

We have two upwind foresails. Our #1 is 509 sqft. And is our go to for anything up to 18 knots. It was up for the first three days of his race as we slatted our way through the light airs. I have a feeling when we assess its condition after this race it is the sail that has taken the most abuse. Flapping around against rigging as lifelines and so on is really bad for sails.Our other upwind sail is our 339 sqft #3. This is heavier material than the #1, also made of carbon and Kevlar, and is good for winds upwards of 30 knots of breeze.

So far we have used his sail only once for blast reaching briefly, and it has been an occasional go to when we have had to deal with longer head sail changes. It’s always on deck and rigged ready to go at any time.

After our #3 we have a #4 which is similar to a sheet of plywood, and a storm jib which is like two sheets of plywood. These sails will have stayed in the bag for the entire trip and so far have only been used as extra weight on the upwind side of the boat as we stack sails on deck to help keep the boat level.

Now for our downwind sail inventory. We have an A-0 (code-0), an A-2, an S-1, S-2 and S-3. Our A-0 is a light air reacher that we thought we would use more, but has remained in its bag, and likely will stay there. The useful wind angles for this sail are quite narrow and we just haven’t had the conditions for it.
Our A-2 is our go to reacher with a nice hot band of useful wind angle. It has been used a few times when our transition from upwind to downwind d sailing was happening. I don’t expect to see it again this trip. As we get closer to the finish the wind has swung predictably further behind us. The A-2 is 1121 sqft and is called “A” because it is an asymmetric triangle.

So that brings us to our “S” kites, or symmetrical spinnakers. Our S-3 is a 1oz narrow shouldered all around kite that is 992 sqft. We have gone to this spinnaker at night on a few occasions when our bigger kites become a handful in squalls. We have also used it in combination with our #3 to reach hard. The S-3 provided the forward power while the #3 kept the bow pushed down.

Our S-2 is a .5oz broad shouldered beast that is 1054 sqft. We haven’t used it often this trip as it’s very light cloth and even in light airs the sea state can knock the sail around and the risk of tearing is too much. It’s also a better reaching sail than any of the other S kites.
Our go to kite is our 1oz S-1. 1151 sqft of love that is currently bringing us home. It flys well in the really light 10 knots of breeze and would last much longer than the crew in 30 knots.

That’s my little sail geek morning briefing for y’all. I have to be should go. I’ll do a crew brief later. Tomorrow if you want I can do a navigation lesson on how we find the needle in the haystack that is Hawaii.

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July 21: Feeling HOT HOT HOT

7/21/2018

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Happy weekend everyone. We’ve gone sailing seeing as how it’s Saturday and everything, Tegan suggested we head out for Hawaii, so that’s our weekend plans. What’s yours? It occurred to me this morning that this is kinda like we are driving our house to Hawaii.

A little bit like the movie Up,Which is funny because we have a Kevin as well! As much as this is an adventure a great sail, and a fun little jaunt into the Pacific driving our house, we are acutely aware that this is also a race. As the miles melt away and we close in on Oahu it is becoming more and more important for us to be focused and racing 100% of the time.

While we haven’t been slacking off at all we are certainly now working as hard as ever for every little bit of boat speed and angle, every bit of advantage we can leverage out of the northerly and westerly position we’ve put ourselves in. The Pac Cup race tracker is now live and we know where we are and where our competition is. What we also know is how fragile any of the top four spots in our race are. It seems crazy to break down our speed gains by tenths or hundredths of a knot, but when you consider we are within minutes of almost all our fleet with 600 miles to go, a tenth of a knot more boat speed for a few hours can make the difference. Game on!

I don’t think I’ve written about food yet. On board we have one celiac vegetarian, one dairy free gluten free, and one vegan. We also iac vegetarian, one dairy free gluten free, and one vegan. We also have four eat everything~arians. So within that combination of food specifications, our menu plan is complex to say the least. We could have gone freeze dried or really simple and boring like some crews, but our first priority here is to have fun, so we didn’t want to not have good and varied meals the whole trip.So what do we eat, and how much of it do we have? In our list of meals we have fajitas, coconut curry, vegetable soups, pastas and stews.

We are getting into some of our stronger spiced foods now, as we started out with really basic, not so tasty, but easy to digest rice meals so that it wouldn’t trigger seasickness. All bets are off at this point in the game and the meals are frankly delicious. So that’s what we eat. How much did we bring you ask? Well, check this out. We wanted four complete meals per day for 18 days NOT including breakfast.

So, we have 504 lunch and dinner type meals on board. On top of that we have porridge, eggs, bacon and hash browns for our breakfasts. And finally we naturally have snacks galore, ranging from trail mix to chocolate to granola bars, and up until today we still had fresh fruit in the form of oranges and lemons. I have to give Alie and Kevin full props for organizing the food, and for the two of them and Lee for cooking it all.

In San Francisco we rented an air bnb with a good kitchen and the three of them cooked for two days straight with some chopping help from the rest of us. Our intention was to freeze everything in zip locks and pack the freezer fridge and coolers well to extend the frozen factor. Unfortunately only about 2/3 of our stuff got frozen before we had to leave so some food came on board with a little more urgency to eat. We have to jettison some of our less successfully frozen meals as they simply went bad.

Now, with three days left in our race, looking at what food is left, we are going to likely cross the finish line with very few actual meals left. All things considered a pretty successful program. I’ve sent two pictures. One is of Dave Ben and Ian lathering up in a downpour near sunset last night. The other is of Tegan,s back after a couple days of tanning with his PFD on. It’s 28C, with 23C water temp and time for me to get a couple hours sleep before my 6 to 10pm shift. Happy weekend!
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THE HEAT IS ON...

7/20/2018

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John here. Daily report to follow:

​The heat is on,(did you just sing this in your head while reading this...)! The air temps here have soared with clearing sky’s finally. Believe it or not we have had rainfall every day, and very seldom had sun for more than an hour or two. But it’s here now, bring on the heat.

The on deck crew have as little clothing as is legal on and the off watch crew look uncomfortably warm as they sleep. There are various means of staying cool. We have a spray bottle which is very refreshing and staying hydrated is obviously key.

I bought a woman’s sun hat at Walmart to keep the sun off my face and shoulders. I realized it needed some modification after I wore it for the first time. I bent up and tied up the back so that it sits above my PFD. Then I put two adjustment strings running from each side of the front brim to a stopper on the top of the hat. This way I can adjust either side of the hat for more or less sun, and
ease of seeing the sails.

It’s fabulous!!! Patent pending...

Here is the update on yesterday’s breaking story. The bathroom door did in fact lock itself without anyone inside. Lucky we were able to open a deck vent and super hero Alie used a boat hook to reach in it and save the day. As she put it “saving humanity one bathroom door at a time”

Dave remains a little tender after bruising his back a little but it’s all fine. Alie continues to eat her way across the Pacific. Tegan continues to claim its “too tippy” to accept my backgammon challenge. Kevin remains the strong silent type while perfecting various breakfast recipes.

Ian, our floater and naviguesser has told at least five jokes a day since we started...I’m not sure how many that is, I only know one joke and told it a few times already. Ben seems to have a song for every occasion. Most of them inappropriate and to the tune of The Wheels on the Bus. And I am still keeping people’s spirits up by writing little incentive notes on the toilet paper ... “you got this Tegan!”

​Thats all for now...
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Middle of Nowhere ...

7/19/2018

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Today we were lucky to get the following update from John Lee and a picture... from the middle of the Pacific ocean!?! Isn't technology amazing? The race continues and its still anyone's game...

     Around 1am today we hit our half way point. This isn’t the point exactly between San Francisco and Oahu, or the point where there are 7days down, 7 to go. This is the point where there is as much distance behind us as there is in front of us. In this case it was 1052 nautical miles in each direction. This is definitely the point in the trip where feel the most isolated.

     We haven’t seen another boat for three days now. In fact nothing has even registered on our AIS tracker for almost as long. An emergency here, or a breakage or otherwise would have massive consequences as far as assistance goes. Something that is always on our minds as we negotiate our days.

     We celebrated our midway point by eating ice cream with granola and mangoes. So great!!The sailing has been generally fantastic and the crew work really hard to keep our speeds up. While it’s great to get personal speed records as we surf down the rollers, our real goal is good averages in the right direction. As the wind bends it’s the direction part that is challenging.

     We went over 7 days without a gybe, and now we are plotting several gybes ahead as we hone in on our destination. We joked about forgetting how to gybe by the time we had to but we are on it and our sail changes and so on have so far gone off without a hitch often in very strong wind and pitch black. Sea temperature now is 20.2 Celsius, and the air temp is 21.2C. Napping for the off shift during the day is getting hard with the heat.

     Believe it or not where we sleep on the boat is important as weight distribution makes a difference to our speed. Kevin and I have switched bunks so that my more rotund weight is further aft and to the high side. I am certainly not the biggest or heaviest person on the crew, but I’d like to think I have the most, er, versatile weight.

     Developing story: our head (bathroom) door has a latch on both the inside and outside so that at no time the door will swing open. We were all well aware that mathematically speaking there was a slim chance that the inside latch could close without someone in there. Well....more to come...
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HALFWAY TO HAWAII WEDNESDAY - Day 7

7/18/2018

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The Crew is now passing the halfway mark, and while they are now currently in 5th, as we have seen a lot can change in a day. And the shore crew at home couldn't be more proud of them and what they are accomplishing. 

We were able to get another update from John today!

"It’s funny how your brain works on you when it’s really dark and the sailing is challenging. It really requires that we remind ourselves how privileged we are to go on an adventure like this. It’s hard to feel upbeat sometimes but I think we all as crew get reminded often that this is amazing and speaking for myself apart from missing family, there really is no place I’d rather be. That being said we had a challenging night and our beloved grey and red spinnaker decided to get angry and remind us who’s boss. It’s sorted now and the sailing has been fantastic since our little lesson in humility.
Apparently my dad joked about Nanaimo bars in the bilge. Tegan and I talk about Nanaimo bars almost every day. We are pretty sad not to have them out here with us. Had we departed from Vancouver I have no doubt we would have some stashed away in the fridge. Unfortunately San Francisco has never heard of Nanaimo bars. Oddly enough we were unable to find Ju Jubes or pepperoni sticks there either. So weird!!!

We found a flying fish on deck this morning. Well, I guess technically it was a former flying fish. Alie was very focused on examining it and likened herself to the little girl in Finding Nemo.

There is a lot of plastic garbage out here. It’s a little disheartening. Lots of little bits of unrecognizable plastic, and the odd recognizable pieces such as buckets, containers and a hard hat. The largest thing was a 40 gallon barrel that Ian narrowly avoided at speed.

The Watch 1 has discovered the precooked bacon and our egg and hash brown breakfasts are now even better. We had one avocado go ripe on us yesterday, we expect the other 20 avocados to go ripe all at the same time tomorrow. In an unrelated story we feel it’s time to start breaking out the nacho chips and cheese.

Our watch system is 6,6,4,4,4. It’s a common system that seems to be working great. It’s to six hour shifts during the day and three foff at noon, on at 6pm, off at 10pm, on at 2am, off at 6am, on at noon etc etc....

The six hour off shift everyday is a time we all use for extra stuff like washing, or in Kevin and Alies case getting more food. We now refer to the six hours off as our long weekend. So the conversation goes “long weekend coming up, whatcha going to get up to?” Usually answered with “I’ll probably catch up on some sleep and maybe hit the hairdressers”. So life here is very much like life in shore, only different. Wwwaaaayyyyyyy different! Tomorrow I’ll tell you about my amazing hat reefing system. That’s all for now."
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Day 6 Update from the Pacific Cup Race

7/17/2018

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Here's what you've all been waiting for Fugitive Fans, our very own John Lee's update, we take you now to the Pacific Ocean for more coverage of the 20th Pacific Cup Yacht Club Race, well earlier today actually.....
First flying fish sighting today! 
They jump out of the water to avoid their predators but these guys took one look at our big grey and red spinnaker and seemed happier back in the water.
Alie holds all three speed records from yesterday. In an unrelated story the unofficial number of nighttime broaches is also held by Alie.
Life on board can be a bit rough depending on the sea state. All three walls in the head have Kevin’s face prints on them. And Dave seemed a little sore after a slide down the deck last night. They are both fine but it is a reminder that what we are doing can take its toll on the body. 
Occasionally Benjamin plays the guitar and there are always jokes flying back and forth. If anyone has met this crew that would not come as a surprise. 
Without access to Google more of what Tegan says seems factual than normal, I’m keeping a list so we can fact check once in port. 
Ian so far has worn a dress shirt and jeans the entire trip. Today he is wearing a shirt he insists is “salmon” colored. Again, where is google when you need it. And lastly I try to keep the crew happy with tokens of love and caring. After using the head I like to fold the ends of the toilet paper roll like they do in hotels. No one seems to have noticed so I now also draw a little heart on there too. That’s it from John on the boat.
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Day 5 of the Pacific Cup Race to Hawaii

7/17/2018

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Happy Monday Everyone! Day 5 sees more urgent attention to personal hygiene. Yesterday John shaved with salt water and sunscreen. Today John's face feels sore. Baby wipes are the new hot 10 minute shower and medicated Gold Bond is... well... the new hot ten minute shower. We are slowly introducing these items to Tegan so as not to confuse him. 
Watch 1, Tegan, John, and Kevin were postulating the night away discussing how crazy our friends would think we were if we crammed 7 people into a Winnebago you weren't allowed to leave and drove it around 35kms for two weeks with the headlights off at night. If that doesn't make sense, then why should this!?! 
Apart from the general dumbness expected from this group we are slamming miles under the keel as fast as we can. Best Regards,
The Fugitive
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Day 4 Update from The Fugitive

7/17/2018

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As the sun sets on day 4 of the 20th Pacific Cup Yacht Club Race (the fun race to Hawaii) for The Fugitive, we have a few more stories coming in from the crew. This afternoon the following update from John Lee was sent to the shore crew:
" We are currently reaching fast in 18 knots of wind, the sky has cleared and the water is crazy blue. The waves are stacking up a bit so surfing is common into the 10knot range. We had a squall last night that produced 30 knots and taught us to be a little more conservative when it's dark out :). 
The crew is in great spirits and we are really having fun. Most of our goals so far have been met. Watch A has come up with an amazing acapella three part harmony song about things that probably shouldn't be sung about. Watch 1 has taken a more sports oriented approach to skill development and Tegan and John can catch M&M's thrown from basically anywhere on the boat into their mouths in the cockpit.
Animals so far. Around the Farallones during the first night we were pursued by three curious sea lions. Watch A had a whale about the same size as the boat swim all around and under the boat at quite high rates of speed. And Watch 1 had dolphins playing in the wake in the pitch black of night. We could see the dolphins coming because they glowed with phosphorescence. "
Thanks John for the great update, any one have questions they would like to ask the crew? Curious about the songs Watch A has been singing (however we are hesitant to ask...)? Let us know and we will do our best to find out. They are loving and appreciate all the support coming from home, here's wishing them continued success into Day 5!
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The 20th Pacific Cup Race | The FUN Race to Hawaii

7/14/2018

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We are a little behind on updating the website, but here we are. It's been a little over a week since the crew headed down to San Fransisco with some final preparations before starting the Pacific Cup Race to Hawaii on July 11, 2018. You can as always track the boats via the official tracker located here but please note, there is a 6 hour delay (to keep the race competitive). 

The media crew have been providing great updates on the official website, and we highly encourage you to check those out here.

One of the latest updates from the boat, Alie has been rocking the helm, Ian did some cleaning in the light to no winds they are currently in, and the food has been amazing. Be sure to keep following our Facebook and Instagram sites for pictures and updates.

See you in HAWAII
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