Tricky Pacific Cup in 2018

Artie Means previews the 2018 Pacific Cup in an interview with Sailing Anarchy before navigating the Mills 68 Prospector to Hawaii.

Quite tricky Pac Cup this year, unless you started with the first group yesterday! Here are 2 screenshots, showing Tuesday AM (24 hours for the Monday fleet) and Saturday AM (24 hours for the last starters) which is the chart above.

The early boats are getting a nice Pac Cup reach, cruising at 8-10 knots (really good for the ‘slow’ boats).

But by Thursday, an upper level low is forecast to come over the area and sit directly on the rhumb line, shut off the fun, and make a very trick call whether we go under it on the traditional course or above it to the north. As the pics shows, the white colored area is zero wind; so rhumb line isn’t an option. Luckly we have a few more days to watch the forecast before we have to make that call.

My guess is that the very powered up Prospector won’t see the 10 knot speeds for her first 24 hours; makes it hard to catch the first boats! Fingers crossed this low dissolves, but not likely.