The Pacific Cup (Ocean Navigator is a co-sponsor) will start on July 4, 2022, sailing from San Francisco to Kaneohe, Hawaii. The race has 80 entries at press time. One of the distinctive aspects of the race is the extent that race organizers offer participants a range of opportunities to learn as they get ready for offshore sailing. This includes a slate of seminars — dubbed “The Pacific Offshore Academy” — and an extensive series of articles, lists and tips on the Pacific Cup website called the “Knowledgebase.”
The seminar series got underway on October 9 with a “Prepare Your Boat” seminar that focused on such boat-related topics as offshore rigging, communications, electrical systems, sail selection, crew selection, etc. Forty people attended in person, with another 15 online. A “Plan Your Trip” seminar with scheduled talks focused on racing performance will be offered via Zoom in four independent seminars on Feb 2 and 10 and March 16 and 23. A third seminar on “Personal Crew Preparation” is set for February 27 and will be held at Corinthian Yacht Club in Tiburon and will help ensure “…that you and your fellow crewmates are ready for the trip and have the skills and behaviors needed for a safe, fast, and pleasant crossing.”
Hawkeye King, one of the organizers of the seminars, wrote in an email: “We believe there is great value in an educational program that sets up our racers for a successful race. We’re ‘the fun race to Hawaii,’ and we get a great range from very highly competitive boats to casually competitive boats in our cruising division. We try to tailor a seminar series that covers all the bases, and from which skippers and crew at every level can benefit.”
In addition, the Pacific Cup Knowledgebase (pacificcup.org/kb) is available to both racers and the general public and is grouped into 25 different topics, including communications, driving, food, emergency steering, weather, planning and more.