Barn Door In Jeopardy?

I wanted to start a whole new Post to present the only flicker of Bad News resulting from today's communications and weather forecasts.

All that good news for wind coming inshore to get NE moving today will, unfortunately, also stay around to kick start the big boys who start tomorrow at 1300.

With such a slow start for the Monday starters and a fast one, out of the gate for the faster boats Friday, Narrow Escape's chance of winning the Barn Door for the fastest elapsed time now appears difficult.

Above appears the Optimum Route that Raytech Performance Software generates based on the current long range NOAA Weather Predictions as parsed by Saildocs.com. You get full marks for noticing how the recommended route has changed to an almost classic Transpac Race Route from the atypical one output by the program since before the start.

Please note that the route now begins at their 0600 position and that we have returned to normal 6 hour Isochrones. Raytech estimates that the next 10 Isochrones will average 58 miles each or 580 miles VMC.

According to Raytech, as it interprets the wind speeds and angles embedded in the GRIB File, and applies the Target Boat Speeds contained in Narrow Escape's Polars file, they will be 426.37 miles (approximately!) from the start line when the big boats start at 1300 tomorrow. That means for any Friday starter to beat Narrow Escape they will need to average 24 % faster over the entire course.

And while I am at it Raytech also calculates that Chuggy and Doug will arrive alongside Diamond Head at 1402 HST on Saturday the 16th. So nice another fast afternoon trip down the Molokai Channel and a daytime finish. I'll tell Helen so she can make some dinner reservations - say about 1900 sound OK?