After completing the Single Handed Transpac many boats spend a few days on the island before heading back out to sea and making the far less pleasant sail back to California. The advantage of having a small trailerable boat is that you can skip that part of the adventure, pack the boat on it’s trailer, put it on a ship and fly home in a matter of hours!!

It has become a tradition for the NorCal Open 5.70 fleet to meet the SoCal fleet for the High Sierra Regatta organized by the Fresno YC on Huntington Lake, Ca. What an amazing place to race on the water and to spend time with the fleet onshore. This year 17 Open 5.70s joined the fun, 11 from the Bay area and 6 from South Cal. This venue is very laid back and many people make a long weekend out of it arriving early and leaving late so as to enjoy the lake and everything it has to offer – even the opportunity to sail with family members.

The final overall results were as tight as they could be with 3 boats tied for first with 9 points! Read more…

Jerome has finished the Single Handed Transpac!! He crossed the finish line on July 14th at 11:10 PDT with an elapsed time of just under 14 days. In the unofficial preliminary results Team Open Sailing finished 9th overall, and 4th in the Fast & Fun division!

“Thank you so much to all of you for your support, good vibes and kind words before, during and after this race!!! If I was solo racing to Hawaii, I could have never done it without the help of many of you, hence the name of the boat “Team Open Sailing”! I will be back to LA soon and can’t wait to share some more stories of the crossing!”

I haven’t talked to Jerome yet today so no news other than he only has 400 miles to go. He took a flyer to the south yesterday and I haven’t found out why. So far it hasn’t paid off and he lost some places in the standings. There’s still plenty of time to make it back especially as he should be sailing in almost perfect conditions for the boat.

There are 17 Open 5.70s registered for the High Sierra Regatta this weekend!

This regatta is always fun. Camping and Sailing in the mountains on a beautiful lake – what can be better. The Open 5.70 fleet has the entire college campsite reserved so it should also be a very social weekend!!

677 miles to go… the weather is certainly going to be interesting towards the finish… the racers are definitely going to experience a change in the wind & waves (both direction and intensity) caused by hurricane Emilia to the south!! There is also Tropical Storm Daniel. The models are showing too much wind although we can expect to it be more southerly than usual. However, both storms have been pumping out quite a lot of waves which are already close to reaching the fleet. Of course the Pogo was built for these conditions and catching waves is one of Jerome’s speciality after years of practice on the planing hull boats. With a bit of luck he might be able to catch a wave and ride it all the way to the top of his division.

It’s starting to get fast… Jerome’s current record for distance covered in 24 hours stands at 186 miles, and his highest average speed for any 2 hour period (how often the tracker updates) is 12.84 knots!!

Here’s the latest from Jerome – (more…)

With no inboard motor and only two 105A batteries the Pogo 2 needs a way to generate power when on long ocean races such as the Single Handed Transpac. While solar power is great (and free) there are limits to the size and weight of the solar arrays you can install on a 21 foot boat not to mention they don’t give a very high output if the weather is overcast or if it is night. To make sure we have enough power on the Pogo 2 to we use an EFOY fuel cell. (more…)

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The first boat across the line in the Single Handed Transpac is the Open 50, “Truth”. @Jerome Sammarcelli still has 800 miles to go on the Pogo 2 which is less than half the size of Truth! He is currently 7th overall and 2nd in his division!

2012 Singlehanded Transpac Start from Pierson Jacquelin on Vimeo.