This is the second of three articles from Neil Humphry on the task of putting together an ownership and long distance race program with the TP 52 Flash. If you haven't read Part1, check it out. Enjoy..

12 days, 10 guys, 2308 nautical miles.

Getting across the starting line at the 2004 IBM Vic-Maui was a breeze compared to what we pulled off getting to the starting line...

We planned to sail Flash north from San Francisco on or about June 1st. We waited for a weather window, with Commanders Weather giving us daily routing updates, all of which indicated that beating into the June storms would beat the crap out of Flash. By the 5th, Mari-Cha IV had put in to KKMI after sailing up from South America, with a number of her crew describing the weather as some of the ugliest beating they'd ever done...

That made my decision simple. Will Paxton and the guys at KKMI hauled Flash, dropped the rig and keel, and Chuck King at Charles King Trucking hauled ass north to Bellingham, WA, where Carey and his crew at Seaview Boatyard North took over. With Roland Brun supervising, we put Flash back together, and eight days after the decision to truck the boat to Vancouver was made, we sailed into Vancouver. At this point, I figured we deserved a medal just for effort and a record transport and commissioning.

Three days of chaotic race prep and sailing in English Bay with corporate sponsors and their guests ensured that we were all exhausted, wired, and generally burned out, so on Saturday June 19th, we sailed for Victoria's inner harbour, where we could immerse ourselves in the race atmosphere (okay, partying and sailing).

With three whole days in Victoria sailing Flash as a crew for the first time, we managed to get just competent enough that Roland stopped muttering Caledonian swear words to himself. And on June 23rd, under sunny skies, with Commanders Weather's final routing advice, we crossed the start line (got a trophy for that...nailed the favored end).

Ocean racing is almost never this pleasant...no rain, great breezes, calm seas, warm temperatures...and only four hours of no wind. We got out of the Strait of Juan de Fuca in record time, and headed offshore to take advantage of a trough of low pressure that our routers and our navigator hoped would get us south between two high pressure systems near latitude San Francisco.

Now preparation is everything, and our Achilles heel turned out to be Satellite phones. The Inmarsat unit had been pronounced dead by a technician the day before the race, even though guys had been working on it since April. We rented an Iridium phone the night before the race, but discovered that the firmware version in the phone wouldn't allow us to download grib files...of course, we discovered this after the start. So weatherfax would have to do for the race.

Three days in, the highs consolidated, and without the gribs, we banged around for about 18 hours in lightening breezes, until we finally decided to give up our strategy of cutting the corner through the ridge of the high. We dove south into the stronger coastal system where we knew our two closest competitors, Cassiopaea and Renegade, were taking the traditional route around the high.

The next day at roll call, when we found out how many miles we'd given up to the two 73's, Greg, our navigator, banged the handset of the Inmarsat in frustration...and the damn thing lit up like a Christmas tree and worked flawlessly for the rest of the race.

I'll spare you the discussion about hindsight, but suffice to say a number of our smaller competitors ended up doing what we didn't...one has to wonder if, in this era of ultralight boats that can generate a ton of apparent out of any wind at all, sailing through the high is a legitimate strategy. The Raytech routing software seems to think we could have, and Voodoo Child ended up kicking our ass on corrected...they chose to believe the software.

Anyway, we sailed hard into the trades, passing Cassiopaea about three days out, but we couldn't catch Renegade for line honors. Ron Ogilvy (their navigator) and I have sailed together for 30 years, and even lived together when we were single....I digress...so he knows me well. He made no mistakes in covering us and staying on the favored line into Maui.

The final three days of the race were as close to typical trades as we saw; a couple of squall alleys, a great 90 minute ride one morning with 30 knots of wind and the speedo showing 25s, and blazing across the finish line at Kaanapali at 17.5 knots.

When the dust settled, we were second boat across the line, we'd won Division 1 on corrected time, won the team trophy with our two RVYC teammates, and finished 7th overall (the Division 3 boats toasted everyone on corrected...bigger isn't always better).

And Flash? Nothing broken (almost), nobody died, and we're all still talking to each other. My crew flew home back to the real world; Flash returned to San Francisco with Will Paxton and his delivery crew at the helm. The moral of the story: you can live the dream...we did!

A video in wvm format or avi format has been done.
Or go http://cheekykea.net/cheekykea/Movingpictures/ and scroll down until you find the Team Flash Video. Enjoy