Thursday, July 5, 2007

Four Days to the Start


Four days until skipper Simon Garland and crew Nigel Garland, Andy Hamilton, and Jeff Westbrook start the Transpac race from Long Beach, CA to Honolulu Hawaii on board "Peregrine", a slick, fast, and extremely cramped Hobie 33.

The crew are gathering in Los Angeles at Jeff's house in Brentwood. Two fridges are groaning with enough frozen food and water to get us through the trip, with MRE's and freeze dried dinners as backups. A pair of parrots has been sighted in a nearby tree -- a good omen for a trip to a tropical paradise. Their squawking keeps everyone up. Peregrine sits tied up at Long Beach's "Rainbow Harbor," gathering barnacles that will have to be scraped off before departure. A single barnacle can reduce our speed by over ten knots, our skipper says, as he sips his beer and encourages his crew to scrape harder.

Once the race starts, you can track our progress on-line at
www.transpacificyc.org

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