I became involved in the OP (Ocean Planet) program about a year ago knowing Bruce Schwab through the Single-handed Sailing Society. For the most part the Ocean Planet program is an all volunteer effort. I volunteered time doing miscellaneous tasks on the boat from electrical, building carbon toe rails to mundane bottom sanding. As our skipper Bruce can attest it had been a huge process of getting this boat ready to head to the East Coast. Instead of trucking the boat back to the start of the Around Alone race Bruce decided to sail it there breaking it up into legs that crew spots could be purchased through monetary and volunteer donations with the first leg being down to PV. Basically a fund-raiser.

The seven person crew for the race was made up of program contributors (time & money), not any rockstars. None of us had ever sailed the boat together other than the short two day delivery to SD from SF. We had a bit of a learning curve learning where everything was on the boat. When we arrived in SD it was a frenzied pace to prepare the boat for 5 days before the start. Dozens of tasks to do including replacing the broken main battens, adjusting the keel box, rigging the geniker furler, broken SSB, etc. No time to practice sailing or make much of a race strategy. I must say SDYC was a wonderful host YC. There is no YC in the SF Bay that offers the amenities nor the hospitality SDYC did. Thanks to all of you who stopped by to visit us at SDYC.

The amateur crew had a varied level of ocean and Great Lakes racing experience. This was my first distance ocean race. Prior to the race we decided to go with a 3 hour on, 3 hour off shift rotating in a new person each hour. Our skipper Bruce would be a floater allowing him to make tactical decisions at any time. There are 4 pipe berths in the boat, but only two are usable on any given tack so one person slept on the floor with a pad. I enjoyed every shift except my 11 PM - 2 AM one where I always seemed to be very cold, wet and tired. The full moons were great. The 5 - 8 shifts in both the AM and PM were my favorite because there were great sunrises and sunsets.

In order to save weight only dried food was provided for the most part. I think this was a very poor choice as it left the crew malnourished. Personally I lost 12 pounds because there just wasn't anything decent to eat on the boat. The fruit we brought was gone in the first 24 hours. We each did our share of cooking (or should I say re-heating). The system was simple - if your hungry, cook something and then share the rest. That seemed to work fine. Water was provided by a water maker, but at times we would run out. We did carry the mandatory emergency water.

Ocean Planets upwind sail inventory consists of a giant 1800 sq.ft. main, staysail (hanked), working jib (furler), and a genoa (furler). Off the wind a mast head spinnaker (socked) and a large and small reaching geniker (both on furlers). All sails were built by Doyle and worked great. It should be noted these sails are not optimized for light air racing, but instead durability and making it though the Southern Ocean.

Finally our Saturday start came. We were in the PHRF AA class with the Turbo Sleds Merlin (and Magnitude (2nd Fastest Transpac Boat in History) which had the final start on Saturday February 23rd. Other than the PHRF A class with the TP52's and SC70's we were starting on the final day. The other classes had started the two days earlier. At our start the breeze was light. We had the genoa up. This worked well as we went right by Merlin and Magnitude at the start. The first evening we went further East (between the Coronado) then the other boats to get into the offshore wind. Magnitude and Merlin headed South sooner. I think heading South was a better choice as they made some good gains on us. We stayed 50 - 100 miles offshore the entire race. Another choice that cost us was not setting the mast head spinnaker until the next day. We made 204 miles that first 24 hours where Merlin pulled 238.

The second day we did get the big masthead spinnaker up. This allowed us to recoup some lost miles on our competitors. Unfortunately that night we broke our masthead spinnaker halyard. We heard a loud bang. I shined a flashlight all over the round unstayed rig, but saw no problem. 5 - 10 minutes later the halyard snapped. The previous bang was the mast head turning block exploding. Of all the things that effected our performance this was the biggest. No longer could we fly the big kite effectively. We did try to use it on a lower halyard, but it left the luff way too full and drug the foot through the water as the tack fell off to windward. It just wasn't that effective any more leaving us with a large geniker suited better for heavy air reaching. I believe this made us a non-spinnaker boat in a spinnaker division with over half the race left to go. Fortunately we had a huge mainsail that somewhat offset this setback.

Once we got near Cabo the wind lightened and from here on out it would be a light air race. Without a spinnaker it was very challenging. In order to effectively use the large furled geniker we had to sail hot angles keeping the apparent wind at 40 - 80 degrees. I would bet we sailed more miles than any other boat. We had to do this to keep the VMG decent. We would get ahead of the rockstar TP52's then come back on the other jibe to find them ahead of us. It was great fun to mix it up with them. The TP52's appear to be the future of big boat racing. They are rockets.

Jibing on OP is simple. Rotate the mast back so its perpendicular to the boom, release the runner, transfer the water ballast (if any), turn the boat, release the sheet and pull in the new sheet. Pull on the runner, rotate the mast and go fast. Having sails on furlers sure made life easy. The Equipelight shackles are the cats-meow.

Having water ballast was a plus because with such a short-handed crew (only 3 on at anytime) there was no way to have consistent rail meat (except those sleeping on the high side below). Knowing when and how much to use the ballast was a learning process. The thing that most impressed me about OP was the stiffness. Even in 20+ knots the boat was incredibly stable and controllable. Sailing faster than true wind speed was also a new experience. It was so easy to over run the spinnaker. In 6 knots or less of true wind speed the boat was sailing consistently at 1.5 times wind speed. Incredible, but true. I believe the highest speed for the trip was 22 knots. 8 - 15 knots was the typical speeds we saw.

Considering we were an unpracticed short-handed crew and we lost use of our spinnaker after the first night I believe our 4th fastest elapsed time of 130:41 (5.5 days) was decent. While it had little effect on our corrected results placing I am still at a loss as how Ocean Planet received the scratch rating of -114 owing time to both the 8' longer Turbo Sleds Merlin and Magnitude. Both of these boats have oversize conventional poles, where Ocean Planet has a "fixed" 6' sprit pole. Ocean Planet is optimized for short-handed sailing which did reduce the amount of crew work, but probably did not favor a mostly a mid to light air down-wind course, I would have preferred we have been in the PHRF A class with the TP52's and SC70's.

Other than lack of sleep and food the trip was a very enjoyable experience that I would love to do again. I enjoyed the company of everyone on the crew. This Open 60 has a ton more potential. I look forward to Bruce putting the only US Open 60 Ocean Planet on the Around Alone line.

Sportboat