Prospector Racing to Hawaii

This Friday July 13, at 1445 PDT, Prospector will hit the starting line in front of the St Francis Yacht Club in San Francisco bay in the 20th Pacific Cup.

The Pacific Cup, aka the Fun Race to Hawaii, is a 2,070 nautical mile race from San Francisco to Kanoehe Bay on Oahu, Hawaii.  The race typically consists of a short beat out of the bay under the Golden Gate Bridge. From there, racers reach across the top of a windless high pressure system and in to the tradewinds.  After that, the game is to time the gybe for several days of downwind surfing to Hawaii. Once clear of the coast, it will be largely tradewind sailing, hopefully in tee shirts and board shorts!

Prospector is the scratch boat in the race and will be competing for line honors in a challenging class including Rage, a Wylie 70 that once set the course record, and Roy Disney’s Pyewacket - who is always tough to beat.

Currently, the forecast calls for a 6 or 7 day transit, which puts Prospector in Hawaii on July 19 or 20.  The course record of 5 days, 2 hours, 41 minutes and 13 second held by Rio 100 looks safe for another 2 years.

Prospector will be sailing with a crew of 18, skippered by Dr David Siwicki, Paul McDowell and Larry Landry.

Join the Prospector team on its latest adventure on our website prospectorsailing.com.

You can find the race tracker on your Yellow Bric app or on the link on our website or at https://pacificcup.org/tracking.html.

Additional news and information will be available on the regatta website https://pacificcup.org.

The boys have been hard at work getting Prospector ready for the second half of the season.  Check out that beautiful new paint job!

Race along with the team on their blast down the coast.

Continuing Prospector’s year of Pacific domination, the team is gearing up for the San Diego to Puerto Vallarta Race, a 1,000nm run down the Mexican coast.  Given the current forecast (full detail below), navigator Larry Landry has placed the over/under at a 3.5 day race, so the team is aiming for tacos and tequila somewhere between March 6 and 7.  

Prospector is competing in Division 1, featuring speedy 52 footers Bad Pak, Patches and Vincitore as well as Manouch Moshayedi’s Rio 100, who holds the course record of 3 days and 5 hours set in 2016.

As always, the team will post updates from the course here at prospectorsailing.com, and other stories can be found at the race website http://pvrace.com/.  You can follow the team’s progress at the race tracker here, and as always tune in to the @prospectorsailing instagram for a glimpse of life on board.

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Weather Briefing From Larry Landry, Navigator:   Still a little early to be certain but, it looks like we we will start in a 10-12kt westerly that will shift right to NW and build to 15-20kts.  Temps in  low 60's during the day and dropping to low 50s at night.  As we move down the track winds will hold at NW 15-20 and temps will climb to high 60s.  From Cabo to PV winds will shift to N and get light, 5-10kts and them shift back to NW at 15kts ish and temps will climb to 70-80.

Latest routing suggest 3.5 day race.

Prospector’s 2018 campaign starts Friday February 18 when the team takes on the 2018 Islands Race, a 134 nautical mile sprint which starts in Long Beach, CA and finishes in San Diego after leaving Catalina and San Clemente Islands to port.  The race will not only provide the team an opportunity to shake off winter’s cobwebs, but will also serve as a tune-up for the 1,000nm Puerto Vallarta Race in two weeks’ time and the team’s first foray into Pacific Ocean racing.

While it’s still early, the Pacific Weather Gods look to be serving up a forecast that favors reintroduction to racing.  Winds are expected to be in the 8-10 knot range starting out of the west and shifting into light northeasterly breezes by Saturday morning.  The Race looks like a largely off-the wind affair; perfect training for a campaign that promises to feature a good amount of VMG sailing.

Based on the forecast, navigator Larry Landry expects to cross the finish line off San Diego in the early hours of Saturday the 17th.  Since the forecast does not suggest Prospector will be able to challenge for the course record of just over 11 hours (set by the Santa Cruz 70 OEX in 2011), the crew is hoping to at least be ashore before last call.

Prospector will be racing in the ORR-1 class, which features perennial west-coast favorites Pyewacket(Roy Disney, Andrews 70), BadPak (Tom Holthus, Pac52) and a number of other strong competitors.  Follow the team as they test the waters with the yellowbrick Live Tracker  (http://yb.tl/islandsrace2018) and share the adventure through our Instagram feed @prospectorsailing.