Alpha has been my "other boat" until.....yesterday.
My former "primary" boat was an S2 7.9 that I named "Wildcat of Loch Awe" after my favorite natural history conservation issue/species, the endangered Scottish Wildcat. I bought the Wildcat in 2015 with the express purpose of competing in the 2020 Singlehanded TransPacific Race. The Singlehanded TransPac is a solo race from San Francisco, California to Hanalei Bay, Kauai, Hawaii. I've sailed solo to Kauai twice before. I tagged-along with the race (wasn't registered) in 1996 on my Ranger 29 "Spindrift" and then in 2008 I did the race on my Santa Cruz 27, "Ankle Biter".
After being big-boatless (I had a small, wooden 15-foot rowing/sailing boat for a while) I realized that I wanted to keep racing on San Francisco Bay and do one more Singlehanded TransPac. I had visions of doing the SHTP and then moving the boat to Honolulu, flying back in October, and solo cruising to Micronesia. What was the smallest, most affordable boat I could get that would allow me to do that? I settled on an S2 7.9, and found one here on the west coast, sitting on her trailer in Moss Landing, California. I bought "Blue Eyes"...soon to be renamed "Wildcat of Loch Awe".... in 2015 and was soon racing her on San Francisco Bay.
I did a huge amount of work to prepare for the Singlehanded TransPac: electrical system upgrades, some recut sails, extra autopilots, satellite communication...and spent MONTHS making a windvane self-steering system (that never worked). I added an entire asymmetrical spinnaker system, which would be wicked-fast during the middle of the race. Here's the Wildcat (on the left) racing on San Francisco Bay with the asymmetrical spinnaker flying.
The 2020 Singlehanded TransPac was cancelled, along with most of the 2020 local racing season because of COVID. I had faith that the collective "we" would weather the COVID storm and things would be back to normal by summer, 2021, when the race was rescheduled. However, as Spring 2021 approached, it became obvious that COVID was still here. The County of Kauai had stringent requirements for tourists to "shelter in place" in expensive resort hotels. So my wife, Joan would have had to fly to Kauai and spend a couple of thousand dollars just sitting in a hotel room before they would let her leave, all before I ever got there. Local restrictions prevented the racers from getting to know each other on the water and off the water. The preparation seminars were all "virtual". Finally, it was only two weeks before the race started that the committee was allowed to have a skippers meeting before the race, AT ALL.... And then, to top it off, a couple of days after the race finally did start, the Secretary of State for the State of Hawaii called the race chairman and told him that the race couldn't come to Hawaii. This is NOT what I signed up for. This is not the Singlehanded TransPac that I remember from past years. So when the stress hit dangerous levels in March and April 2021, I withdrew from the Singlehanded TransPac. I'm not going to wait until 2023 to go, I have to change things...I'm retiring in October 2022...and Alpha is waiting. So, finally in September I put the Wildcat of Loch Awe up for sale. The sale went incredibly fast, less than 24 hours after listing her, she was sold to a wonderful couple from Texas who will race her on Canyon Lake, in the Texas Hill Country. So....goodbye to TransPac and Micronesia dreams....
And now it's time to focus on Alpha! It's been years, now it's Alpha's turn!