I am looking forward to my 5th Pacific Cup this summer!While living in the beautiful Bay Area for a good many years I took advantage of all the opportunities for sailing, doing races and chartering boats on and around the bay as often as time permitted. But nothing beats the long-distance offshore experience. Over time I sailed the Pacific Coast up and down from Canada to Mexico, sailed the Atlantic, as well as North Sea and Baltic Sea. Mostly on fully crewed vessels, but also doublehanded.
The Pacific Cup races were always the highlights: I did the first one in 1998 on the 66' three mast schooner Millennium Falcon, the next ones in 2000, 2004, 2006 all on Cirrus. So this one in 2008 will be my 4th on Cirrus; I am beginning to feel like being part of the rigging...
In 2000 we made 3rd place in our division, securing it literally in the last minutes of the race, and only because my computer told me that we will be in deep trouble if we didn't hurry up. It almost worked again in 2004. Not satisfied with "almost", and having had to go back to my home country Germany, where the opportunities for real sailing were much reduced, I spent much time in "cyber-sailing", improving the program Cirrugator to a point, where it led Cirrus to 1st place in the Transpac 2007 race. (Unfortunately I couldn't participate due to a birth defect, which was acting up really badly that year - I have the wrong gender!). The program is internet based, you can study it here: www.cirrugator.com and also use it during the race to watch us and the competition.
If I had a wish free, I would ask for a really weird weather situation, which nobody could understand except my program Cirrugator. It could happen!
Aloha, Ulli
1 comment:
you have the wrong gender????
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