Last night foodgasm

I am in Honolulu for my last night before flying home. I decided to splurge and am eating dinner at Iron Chef Morimoto's restaurant at the Modern hotel. OMG! I am enjoying the omakase tasting menu and think that Morimoto has done better than Nobu.

Oahu

Holy crap do Harleys run hot! I'm waiting to tour the USS Arizona memorial. They also have the Missouri here. I believe my grandfather finished his Navy career on mighty Mo, so I might see that too. After lunch I will ride up to the north shore. Coming home tomorrow so I might as well live it up.

Sea legs

Today is Wed and I am about to rent a motorcycle and tour Oahu but the ground keeps moving. My 14 day sea legs are kicking in...

We made it!

We crossed the line last night at 9:35 or so. We took more than the 14 days that I allotted because this was a very low wind year.  I am still processing the experience. More to come - plus pics and video.

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Mon morn and we are still 100nm from the finish. Everyone is frustrated by the lack of wind. 5x5x0

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Sun morn and we have only 248nm to go. The crew is ready to be there already.

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Sat eve and we have made our final jibe to Oahu. 315nm to go. 5x5x0

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I hope the rest of the fleet had as slow a day as we did yesterday. Frustration building ETA now Mon afternoon at best. 5x5x0

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Fri morn and we are just over 500nm from aloha. We cant wait to see the islands on the horizon. 5x5x0.

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This morning we tore the spinnaker that Mike repaired. With it go our hopes of placing. We spent the day under jib. ETA Mon am.

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Thurs @ 7:30am. We kicked butt through the night so we are 700nm from HI. 5x5x0

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Today has been awesome! We repaired the spinnaker, had a hot dinner and I saw the green flash at sunset. 5x5x0

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Wed am and we are wet again. Tue was sunny but SLOW. 875nm to go... 5x5x0

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Under 1000nm to go but we've slowed a bit cuz we tore some holes in our big spin. We'll put the small one up today. 5x5x0.

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i typed a long blog yesterday but it didnt go! so these will be short. halfway and things are well. 5x5x0

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Sat morn brings light wind but still no sun. Where is my tropical vacation? Everybody is resigned to cold food. 1460miles to go. 5x5x0

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Fri am and we are still looking for sun and trades.1600mi from HI

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Still sluggin toward HI. Still overcast. AC inverter kaput so no hot food.

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Day 2 5by5by0. Seas are calm with a good breeze but we havent hit the trades yet.

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first day done and all are tired and wet. we are making great time. 5by5byzero.

Ready to go!

Ok, here's how this is gonna work. I am able to send an SMS (text) message to a blind email account that automatically posts here.  I have no web access so I won't be able to read your comments, but the others reading this blog (both of them) will be able to (so feel free to flame me mercilessly).

If you absolutely must send me a message ... like it is an emergency or something, then you should go to satellitephonestore.com/sms-portal.  Put in my sat phone number (clevery included in the third post) and send me a text.  Basically I plan on this being a one-way communique of what's going on during the race.  I will see you all and post photos/video when I get home.

BTW, Dustan and I came up with a way for me to quickly update her using an old radio check response.  I will say 5x5x0 and she will know that everything is okay.  Now the 5x5 part is the old radio bit. 5 for signal strength and 5 for clarity (on a scale of 1-5).  For us it is 5 for the crew and 5 for the boat.  The last number is for Orca sightings.  She is very concerned that the boat will be attacked by a killer whale.  While rare, it is not impossible so I am including that info for her.

Also I will try to provide our position in Lat/Lon so you can find us on a globe.  Lat is degrees and tenths North of the equator and Lon is degrees and tenths West of England.  For brevity you will see 33.2N118.1W with no spaces.

Finally, we are supposed to have a YellowBrick transponder aboard, but we haven't received it yet.  If we do get it installed then you will be able to see our progress in real time at transpacyc.com or yb.tl/transpac2013.  I don't know how the site works because I haven't been able to visit recently.  The boat is called the Stumppy J in case you need to search for it.

That's it for now.  See you all on the other side.
--Matt

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Sat uplink check

Test

Testing email to blog link....

Hello World!

This is the page that I will (hopefully) blog to semi-daily while racing Transpac.  All I have to do is figure a way to send an SMS from the Iridium phone to an email address that updates this blog. Easy, right?!?