Written by Paul English | September 10, 2024
Like many multihull fans, I have thoughts & dreams of sailing (and racing!) the world on a large catamaran. So I’ve been keen to sail and race with Joe & Sue on their Chris White 48′ catamaran Presto for years. The opportunity finally arose when I postponed my R2AK 2024 plans and Joe invited me to join them for the PNW Offshore race from Illwaco, WA to Victoria BC!
Naturally an offshore race has additional safety and preparedness requirements over an inshore race, so there were some test sails to prepare and train crew. Video was taken of MOB exercises and life raft deployment. During one of these sails we completed the NWMA Seattle Challenge Course in record time and 30+kts of wind: https://northwestmultihull.org/racing/ including a brief turn to check out a MOB Dan Buoy dropped by another boat!
Joe and Sue sailed Presto from Poulsbo to Illwaco, a small double-handing jaunt for them. I picked up crew Nicole and Galen in Portland and drove to Illwaco for a relatively relaxed lay day before the race. Presto was docked directly across from Cheekee Monkee, https://cheekeemonkee.com/ a heavily modified F45 catamaran, and the only other multihull in the race, so we got a close look at the competition. Other very fast boats in the ORC A monohull category included Free Bowl of Soup, Tachyon and Zvi.
We started upwind in relatively light wind on a reachy heading and quickly started separating from the slower boats as we headed away from shore seeking more pressure. I believe Presto’s new bowsprit and screecher really paid off in this race as we spent so many hours reaching and only switched to jib as the wind continued to build as forecast near the corner at Neah Bay. During this leg we saw some unusual things happen with some of the faster boats – Tachyon turned back and seemed to possibly return to the start line(?). I’m still unclear what was going on, but they were so fast they made up the time. Cheekee Monkee made some unusual heading changes, including heading back South at one point. We discovered later this is because they broke about 6 feet off their enormous bowsprit, and covered the open tube end with a 5 gallon bucket before proceeding!
My previous offshore experience (Van Isle 360 2023) didn’t prepare me for how very long a leg we could complete _upwind_ with so few tacks or sail changes! While upwind might be expected for this race, the reachy conditions had Joe & Sue steering to the wind and the primary crew task was to watch for the ridiculous number of (commercial) crab pots. We had a couple of close calls, but few other boats in the race were not so lucky!
Unfortunately my race report thins out at about 11pm as I discovered my scopolamine patch fell off at some point in the past hours and I started to feel a bit wrong, quickly progressing to completely useless. The motion of a large catamaran upwind in big seas is definitely different from a monohull – much more pleasant in my opinion. But my inner ear was having none of it and after quite a few rounds of emptying my stomach overboard (also much safer and more pleasant than on a monohull!) I went below to recover..and despite a few attempts to get back up and function I was out of commission for many hours – around Neah Bay, launching the kite and crossing to the Washington side of the strait. I passed out and woke up to the extremely satisfying sounds of surfing downwind at great speeds.
I was fully coherent and back to contributing enough to be a part of what was (I think) one of the few tactical mistakes we made during the race – crossing to the Vancouver Island side. Our reasoning was sound – the wind was getting lighter, including ahead of us where we saw some other race boats slowing down and there were some large cargo vessels approaching which would pin us to the Washington side for a while until they passed. It is difficult to be certain – particularly without a fleet of similar boats in the race but some of the nearby monohulls that stayed on the Washington side longer seemed to do better during this section.
We did find plenty of wind to keep the spinnaker full on the Vancouver Island side, which only started diminishing as we approached Race Rocks where (as usual) it picked up again and we rounded the corner into another reachy upwind to Victoria.
Overall Presto finished first on corrected time and only a short time behind Cheekee Monkee and Zvi across the line. Thanks so much to Joe and Sue for an incredible race experience!
Here is a link to more information about the race. https://www.cycportland.org/pnwo-home