SA Podcast #60. Transpac winners!

Today, we talk with Quantum San Diego's Eric Heim, who just helped drive the Cal 40 Restless to both its class and Overall win in the just-completed 2025 Transpac.

A great story with plenty of good stuff. And apologies - like an idiot, I hit the wrong button and the last couple minutes didn't record!

Transcript

0:01

Hey, it's the Sailing Anarchy Podcast with me, your host, Scott Tempesta. Uh, I don't have any of my hokey bed music. Which, you know, really sucks as they say in the industry. I've, I've gotta come on cold. So no sound effects, no crickets, no Wawa, none of that. None of that. It's just me, but not just me. Today we got a really, really good episode and I'm really looking forward to this. Um, one of my better buddies, I mean, he might be my only buddy, uh, in the sailing scene is a guy named Eric Heim. Uh, those of you in SoCal know Eric and to know him is to, you know, mostly love him. I think for the most part. Uh, he works for Quantum San Diego and uh, it's just an all around good dude. And he did something. Well, he's part of something, let's say that, I don't want to give him too much credit, but he was on board the Cal 40 Restless that just won the um. Uh, LA to Hawaii race, that would be the Transpac 2025. They didn't win just class. They won overall. And I mean, it's quite a feat. There's nobody that's not talking about this, you know, in like, oh my God. Well, how did, how did they do it? So I'm, I'm just gonna cut right to the chase. Hey Eric, how'd you do it? Um, you know, uh, it's a great question. Uh, I still don't even know exactly how it was. It was really good planning over the years. Certainly we got lucky, but I would say one of the biggest contributing factors, you know, in offshore racing is the people, right? So we had a solid team, um, and if you look at our track. We sailed like 150 miles less than the next boat. And on a Cal 40, that's just what you have to do. And it, it took everybody on the team to be just super diligent about respecting the fact that like, gotta point the ballot, Hawaii, gotta keep, keep an eye on performance of the boat and not go reaching around the course for like speed and fun. Um, and so everybody just being, buying in to like. This is how we're gonna sail and sticking with it for 12 and a half days, that that's how we won. So instead of speed and fun, you had slow and no fun. We had lots of fun. I know you did. Yeah. Anybody who followed along on social media knows we had a pretty good time. Yeah, you guys did have a good time. And, and Eric was kind enough to send us a few of the articles, which we, which we dutifully ran on sailing anarchy. Um, so it's funny, I was gonna like, go, so are you a watch captain? But then I realized, you know, you guys only sailed with five. So it looks to me that virtually everybody had to do everything to some degree, right. Yeah, I mean for sure, like, you know, everybody drove, we had a, you know, it was just a rotating thing. You were two hours on, three hours off, which was actually really nice.'cause two hours on deck's easy, even when it's like kind of shitty out. Um, and three hours off is enough that you get pretty good rest breaks. Um, so timing wise, it worked really well. You'd come on deck. You were kind of like in trim and boat setup mode and you know, if anything needed to be moved around, whatever, um, and sort of just help the driver out a little bit. Keep him on the instruments and, you know, talking through stuff that was happening. And then, um, your second hour was you jump on the, on the helm. Drive with a tiller, which is cool. Um, but yeah, you just drive for an hour and then you had an off watch. So from that perspective, it worked really well. Um, and everybody had some different strengths on board. And um, you know, our navigator was Graham Bell, Ally's cousin. Uh, he did a great job. I think one of the interesting things though is like I. Historically, everyone's like, oh, navigating transpac. It's become much more of a collaborative process than I think it ever used to be, just with all the technology and like the fact that you can look at real time, which was new this year of like where everyone is. Um, and I think it changes the game a little bit. I liked it a lot better than being beholden to going down, talking to the navigator, being like, Hey. Where are we, how are we doing? You know? Right, right. The information's there, and so it allowed really, Allie, Graham, and myself to just sort of pow wow and have good chats and like stay on it and, and, and all be on the same page all, all the time. Y you know, and, and on the watch systems, by the way. So it was one person up at a time. Uh, well, no two people on deck, but. Okay, so two people up and two people down. Right. Three down. Three down. That's right. You had five. Okay. Five. Yeah. It, it's interesting to hear that about the collaborativeness of, of this, of the pro, the navigation process and you know, I think the last, I mean, Jesus Christ, I'm old, but I think the last trans back I did. Was on the Santa Cruz 52 pressure cooker, and I was in like these 94 maybe. And you know, and every, every one I, every long distance race I'd done before that, it was like. Hey, navigator, how are we doing? Like, where are we? Like what do we think about wind? And that kind of stuff. And it was like, you know, it, it was all on the guru. And, and if the guru wasn't actually a guru, then you were pretty much fucked. Um, yeah. And, and so, you know, that's interesting to hear. And I, I did like, and I'm sure you guys liked, and I bet every boat liked the fact that it, everything was, was real time. I mean, that was, I think that's way better, don't you? I do too. I mean, it made it feel like. A small boat race. It was no different than going out and racing in Ethel's weekend. You're like, you knew where everyone was. You could see how they were going. Um, I mean, dude, we, we rounded the west end of Catalina and we saw a couple competitors for maybe, I don't know if we even saw anybody on day two. And we never saw another sailboat until we pulled into aoi. You're kidding. No, we saw one light one night of, we think it was Groundhog Day. But again, we were sailing such different angles. Yeah. That these guys were just sort of zigzagging around around us. And if they were five miles off and it was dark, you just didn't see'em. Y you know, and I, I was obviously following you guys, you know, rabidly and, um, and I, you know, I saw you guys, you got out of the blocks in good shape. Your whole fleet, your whole class, I should say. Got out of there with pressure and, you know, I, I was kind of waiting for you guys to hit some sort of odd hole. Or some big lightning phase that generally happens relatively early on in this race and it, it just didn't happen. I mean, I'm like, holy shit, these guys have had breeze. Like literally the, I know it got lighter, but like, it never really shut off as far as I could tell. And it looked like you guys just got launched with Breeze and it never really ended. Is that, is that accurate? It's pretty accurate. Um, you know, they're all, all trans facts are a little different. This is my fourth one, but, um. This one felt, I mean, two years ago was, was atypical for sure. This one was a much more typical transpac. Um, but yeah, it's always a lottery, right? The start date thing. Of course, we started on the first, the fast guys started on July 5th. So there's nothing you can do. You're, you're gonna have a different experience. Yep. And different weather. And that's why the rating system changed this year. Um. I am not gonna lie, I was skeptical about the change in the rating system this year. I'm like, oh, let's see how that plays out. Um, now I'm obviously a huge fan of it Now. What was, what was the change? Eric, can you explain, explain to people what that change was? Yeah, so the change is, previously they had, they've spread the start dates out for, for a number of years now because they just, they have such dissimilar boat speeds and you can't have people sitting around in Hawaii for three weeks. Um. So what they used to do was they would take a 20 year average of transpac, whether you know what it had been, and average it out. And then the boats were rated on under or R on that format. And it was kind of a luck of the draw on when your start date was. If you had a good start date, things were gonna be good. If you had a bad start date, you were not gonna win overall. So what they did this year was they changed it. And they gave, I don't remember if it was 24 or 72 hours before each start date, they ran the weather models, ran the VPPs through ORR and said, okay, this is projected what this boat should do this year under these conditions. And it was basically like, could you fail at or above or near your potential? And that was, that was it. So I think. And you know, there's, there's a few things that will always apply. You'll never win overall if you don't, if you don't win your start date. Yeah. You still have to win your date. Yeah. So that was kind of. Goal one is win your day. And that gives you the opportunity. And by the way, you did, Jesus decides, you know what, what you're getting on that day. You don't decide, right? Nope. You can pick the day or you can pick the weather, but you can't pick both. Um, so and so then, how did that manifest itself in just in terms of, you know, the handicap process, corrected times, time owed, allowed, all that sort of stuff. I mean, I think overall it worked out pretty well given there were people from the day, two starters, definitely seemed to have gotten, they, they had the worst conditions. Yes, they did. They had the worst start by, by far. And, and so just ignoring them for one second, like you had boats from the first start date and the third start date, all like right there, and the final standing's all very tight. So I think conceptually it probably worked out really well. Um, this is a Stan Honey idea, so anybody who knows Stan and, and his pedigree knows it's probably a really good idea. Mm-hmm. Um, and a probably a more fair way to run it. I think, you know, from where I sit, it, like thinking about it for the, the day two guys, if you have, you know, the worst weather, it's also hardest for you. To get through those bad spots. And so if you're racing against your, you know, performance potential, it's a harder hill to climb to be at that higher percentage over those poor conditions. Right, right. Um, you know, the fast boats, they, when it's windy, they haul butt. When it's light, they don't. We kind of just go the same speed no matter what. No, every, every time I looked, you were go. I mean, I, I'm trying to think of the right number, but let's just say you were going 7.9 knots, like, uh, yeah, it was like 7, 7 3, 7, 4 was, and, and that was, you know. Stan Honey, speaking of him again, um, he was instrumental for us, uh, as far as just giving us some like, I mean, he's, he's never won the trans pack to Hawaii, I don't believe, but he is won multiple Pacific Cups, multiple single handed trans packs, and he is obviously won multiple trans packs on other boats. And so he gave us a bit of a cookbook on like, here's what you do. I'd say the number one overarching thing that we did was like, he goes, if you're going seven knots, you better be pointed at the island. Otherwise you're just giving it away. Mm-hmm. And so we just stuck to that. Like, if you're going seven knots, you're going there. So our speed was like seven, four the whole time. You know, it, it was remarkably consistent. I'll, I'll give you that. And you know, there probably weren't any real highs to sort of get, um, and certainly it certainly pointing the bow up on Cal 40 ain't gonna buy you all that much. Um, and so did you have to beat on everybody or did everybody have to beat on everybody? Like dude. Pull the pullback a little bit. Like, we're going too fast, we're going too high. Was that, was that a constant refrain on the boat? Um, most, most of the team was really just pretty diligent about it. And it wasn't, it wasn't like you were yelling at people, um, but you'd feel the boat rock up a little bit once in a while and you're like, are we sailing too high or was that a wave? Yeah, generally it was a wave. I mean, we put a new rudder on the boat. Uh, not long before the start, the boat had a one of the Carl Schumacher rudders, which were quite good. Um, but then it was suggested to us that maybe we take it a step further and we put it an even deeper rudder on. Um, and we used, we put bar, uh, we put bearings in, so modified Brad Fitzgerald modified the boat and put some. Put rudder bearings in the boat. Didn't originally have rudder bearings when they were built 58 years ago. Smart. Yeah. Smart. Who designed the rudder? Um, so this rudder was built by, uh, brownie up at Phos Foam. Mm-hmm. Um, big shout out to him, man. Like, you know, he got it to us. He time for a way better price than, uh, going to some of the other ones that another Cal 40. Has done and was completely unaffordable. Oh really? Yeah. So yeah, I mean some, somebody else put like a$25,000 carbon rudder on a boat and we kind of looked at that rudder and said, well, it looks sort of like this mold that Brownie had kicking around. I think it was from like an IMX 40 and we're like, let's try that. We threw that on. I love, I love it. That one looks about right. Let's do that. It was totally a, that looks about right, dude. I love that. That's, you know, that's pretty much all I've ever been able to do is like, yeah, this feels about right. That looks about right. I don't, you know, anything else, you know, uh, logic, reason or technical, eh, I don't know. I just know it feels right or it doesn't feel right. Um, let's talk a little bit about sailing the Cal 40. So. You know, I had, when I was growing up, my parents had a Cal 29, which was kind of like a mini 40 in a lot of ways. All the Lapworth boats, you know, of that era all had, you know, you know, you've got a Cal 34, I don't have to tell you, but, and I've sailed on the cal a Cal 40 before, and you know, there, there. They're great and they're fucked at the same time. And, but you know, everybody knows that downwind is, you know, where they, they're just a faster boat downwind than they are upwind. And so tell me a little bit about some of the techniques you guys used, um, go into, if you can, just a little bit about, you know, your sail inventory, what, what was fast, what wasn't, um, those sort of things. Yeah. Um, so it was cool, like, you know, we didn't have an unlimited budget at all. We're, we're not that program. Yeah. Um, and so it, everything was just sort of, how do we do this? The best is possible without cutting corners that were gonna matter, but really maximizing every dollar we spent. Um, and so the sale inventory is definitely one of those things. And, you know, that's, that's what I do. So I, I enjoyed it. And Allie, Allie gave me, she never, she never said. You can't do that. Um, so she was really, really helpful with that. But I also, you know, we're all friends and we all know, like we're trying to pull this off. And so we, we were really smart about some stuff where we built two new sails for the boat total. We built a new number one Genoa that we just, I mean, we, we did, we kind of needed one. Uh, when she bought the boat, it had a sale that I built. 25 years ago when I was just starting out sail making. And I was like, oh yeah, she got the boat. And I'm like, I remember building that Genoa. She's like, oh my God. So that thing kind of, kind of died on us last year, and I'm like, we need a genoa. She's like, all right. So poi up, built a nice Genoa. Um, and that, that it's been a great sale, phenomenal sale. Um, the guys at North, uh, built a main sale for another Cal 40 and. They made it black instead of gray. And the guy was like, I don't want it, I don't want it a gray sale. And so Allie called me up, she's like, Hey, they, they have this sale kicking around. Never been up. I can get it for X number of dollars. And I'm like, I looked at math. I'm like, yeah, you're buying that. Like, I can't, I can't build you a sale for that. So yeah, let's, let's do that. So we got a really nice Maine, um. It's not exactly what I would've built, but it was one of those things where I'm like, yeah, it was crazy not to. So that's a good sale. Um, and then moving on from there, like we knew we needed a jib top. And, and there were a few sail that I'd just sort of cobbled together and recut, like the boat came with like a really old Watts Dacron number two. Yeah. And I go, I go, we need a blast reaching sail. And we'd done some training and stuff and some heavier sailing and we're like looking at sail charts from Stan and like, we need a blast reacher. I took this old Dacron sale, recut it into a blast. Reacher. We didn't end up bringing on the race, but we tested with it and we're like, well, if it's gonna be windy, it's coming. So we had stuff like that. Um, we also Rob Walker, who has Nazomi up in the Bay Area. Yeah. Uh, he's, you know, Rob, I do. Great dude. And. He's kind of done racing that boat. He's done mul, multiple single handed trans packs, double-handed pack cups. Um, so he had some good used gear that, uh, we were pretty happy to pick up at fractions of fractions on the, the dollar. Um, we got a really nice gib top from him, which, if you look at the sale chart is, has the biggest blot on the sale chart is the GIB top? I would think so. Um, and it's cool, like. Old masthead boats like this, you, you don't even need a code zero. Like it's not, it's not something you take, you just bring a Gib top and a Genoa diesel and you go for it. Did you guys use that combination much? We did. You did? That was a, that was a workhorse combination. As soon as we got round the west end, we sailed with the Genoa for a little bit more that evening and. I can't remember if we made it all the way through the night or if we changed to the jib top that night. Yeah. Now, are you able to, were you able to put a, the Genoa Day sale inside the regular Genoa or no? Um, we didn't do that. We just didn't, we, we were on the outboard on the rail with the Genoa for a little bit of time before we got the JT up, but it was like. Once we're on the outboard lead, you go, well, we should probably just put the Gib top up and you put the Gib top up and you're like, okay, we're sailing kind of tight with it. You know? You also gotta remember the boat's so slow. It's not creating the apparent wind. Yeah. That modern boats create. Yeah. And it's so easy to look at modern boats and be like, oh, these guys are all triple heading. We, we double heading for us is we have to have things just right. You know the old adage of you put a STA up and it gains you a quarter knot and take it down, it gains you another quarter. An old boat, it's still true. So it's easy to try and be fashionable, but it ain't always fast. So, um, other stale wise, I mean, I know you commented at some point you're like, why don't you have a Spinnaker sta up? Yeah. Well, we brought two Spinnaker STAs and they were both too big. Really? They just, we didn't have enough apparent and they, they blocked the kite. Okay. Make the kite unstable. And that was slower. Harder to sail to than just not having them. So if you, if you could have you with what you know now, if I said, Hey, Eric, I'm, I'm buying a California and I'm putting together a program, you would make it? No, let's do it Scott. What's, but you won't go, you won't go with me, you fucker. Um, no. At this, at this point I'm retiring from California to Hawaii sailing. Absolutely. I don't think you can top this. No. I could say like, you know, we're shooting the shit on deck one day. You know, this and that, and somehow it came up about single-handed trans pack. And I'm like, yeah, I think I, I'd consider a single-handed trans pack at some point. She's like, well, this boat's available if you ever wanna borrow it. I'm like, oh God, don't tempt me. But, um, I think that's the only way I'd ever do a California to Hawaii. Wouldn't you, wouldn't you rather do double-handed? I don't think so. Really? No. Wow. I what? Yeah. For some reason, double-handed doesn't appeal to me as much for a Hawaii race because like you never actually get to sail with your friend. You're just like, Hey, how's it going? See you later. Like, true, I like the camaraderie of, of fully crude, but then like there's that sort of challenge aspect of single-handed and you know. The single land trans pack's. Pretty cool. I got some friends that have all done it. Like it, it's a, it's a brother and sisterhood for them. Like for sure you do that. It's, you know, for sure. I mean, that, that's a real badge of honor, you know? And that takes Totally, you talk about commitment. I mean, you're all fucking in on that. There's no half ass, I mean, no, because we all know all the million things that can and most likely will go wrong. So it's, it's all, it's all on you. And you know, that's just. Too much for me. Um, so back to the And go ahead Scott. Go ahead. Fun fact, the last three single handed trans packs have all been won by California. I know. I, the boats are just frigging remarkable. And the fact that you guys. In 2025 just did what you know you weren't expected to do. But everybody who knows Cal Forty's, were not all that goddamn surprised, especially how you approached the race, the way that you sailed there. You guys were just like rum line down, down, down, as best you could. And so it's really no surprise to those, those of us who know. Um, so if, if we were doing a a, a trans pack, you'd make a what? A, a thin. A s much smaller, maybe lighter Spinnaker stay sale. Yeah. You know, I, I don't even know exactly how you do it. We, it was interesting'cause you'd, you'd think that the pole would be much more square, um, squared back for a lot of it, but you are accelerating down waves. Yeah. So like our average speed was what it was. But I think you need forgiveness in waves and. You sail a boat completely different in flat water than you would, you know, polars are different. We could never sail the polars that, that were provided to us. There's zero chance of like squaring that far back and sailing that deep because you just become too unstable every time a wave goes underneath you. Okay, got it. And, and Spinnaker stay sail doesn't help that. It does not help that, no. So, I mean, we, we've, we thought about a little bit about putting the GS up. But it's so small. I'm like, it's not gonna do anything like it, it's just not gonna do anything. So we just didn't Go ahead. I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't know that you need a spinnaker stale, um, but you always bring a drifter, which kind of does double duty. Sure. If you really needed it to. Sure. Um, sure. If you gotta have a drifter, I would guess. I would think maybe like a, some sort of ideal design spinnaker stay sale on a furler. So that you could just, you know, zip it out and zip it back in. I mean, that would probably be pretty ideal, but maybe not on a Cal 40. Yeah. I, I don't know. And, and all of our STAs were on furlough. Okay. We had one furlough Okay. Used for all the STAs, so they were all on a furlough. Copy that. So the one sale that you've left out is really the money sale, as you called it. It was glamor. Tell us about that one. Um, we had, we, we, we really used three spinnaker the entire time. We put up a shy reaching kite for like, I don't know, two hours. That was a borrowed sale off another Cal 40. Um, we didn't use it for very long. It was just sort of the bridge between the jib top and putting up the, the running kites. And we put it up and we're like, this isn't very good. This is under width. Screw this. And we're like, let's put up the big shit. So we put up the big shit. Um, one of the sails I built for the boat was an S two. Um, that was a nice sail. Um, we built it like, kind of as an offshore S two, so it's not overkill, but it's, it's a little gruer to go up range if you needed it to. But also, you know, the boats, she's, she's not gonna do another trans back, we don't think so. It has to be the sales she's gonna use for stuff like hot rums and some other stuff. Uh, local San Diego races. Um. And so that, that's kind of the, the all purpose light medium kite. And then the other sale that we actually ended up using a heap load was the S four, which was a hand me down from Rob and omi. Um, and it was just a gruy runner that you could abuse and we, we did try and abuse it. Um, it'll be the only sale that I think. After the whole race needs to come back into the loft because our one incident was, um, you know, miraculously we had like no breakdowns the entire time. We, we bent a jib track on the rail because a sheet got caught under it. Big deal. It's like, you know, he didn't beat it back into shape. Um, and the only other thing that happened was we had an after guy come off of a winch. During our first squall, and so the pole went flying forward. It loosened the four guy and it went way up in the air. Oh. And it was like, oh boy. Everyone on deck got on deck. And, um, our four guy system was not perfectly engineered. And so we're like, wow, we gotta add a little bit of. We gotta re-engineer it. So we had to work on the four guy system the next day. Um, and to do that with what we had on board. You know, you're always cobbling, spares and stuff together, but you don't know, you can't plan for every eventuality. No you can't. And so I actually ended up stealing the rope outta the lough of our Genoa sta hold to rework the four guy system. It was a piece of spectrum. I'm like, well, I think that'll work. Took that cut another chunk of spectra out of our, basically our, one of our, our third beef line that was also our spare hallard. Um, took a bit of tail, you know, tail out of that and was like, okay, we're gonna use these to cobbled a new, new four guy system together. And, but that took the genta outta the equations. I'm like, it doesn't have a rough rope. We're not putting that back up. Yeah. Right. And, and Scotty Dalen from SD 1D rigging did. Did, I mean, everything that I saw that he was doing, he, you know, knew shrouds and everything else and looked like when I was checking out the boat. I mean, the boat is just absolutely tits. I mean, it's so cherry, but I was noticing like nice rigging, you know, the boat looked, the rig looked super clean on that boat. Um, and I, I just, I have to think that Scotty did a great job with all this stuff. He really did. Um, he, he was phenomenal. The rope package is perfect. We, we wanted for nothing on that front. Um, and I'm gonna give him another shout out here, the four guy system in engineering, he had nothing to do with that. So I'm not fitting that one on him at all. That's, that's awesome. Um, yeah. Uh, so take us aboard sailing the boat just a little bit. So, you know, I know your average speed was, was, you know what it was, but like when you guys had breeze, you know, how fast did you get that thing going? Top speed, um, was obviously down Moloka channel. We had good breeze down Molokai, um, and, and uh, top speed was Greg Reynolds in like a 28 knot puff. Um, and it was 14 six, I believe. I, I was gonna guess 14. So yeah, it was like mid 14. Yeah. Yeah. And then there were, there were a few times. Over various parts of the race, even when it wasn't super windy where you just set up just right on a wave and like a couple of us got well into the thirteens, mid to high thirteens we're like you, you'd hit one of those and you're like. It felt like falling off a log, but it, you did it and you're like, and then you drop back down to eight, you're like, what the hell? I know, I know. What just happened? Did we break the rig? The boat would just, the boat would just take off on some of these waves and just go down like a surfboard. Wow. I mean, listen, that, that's the magic of that, of those boats and they got all this buoyancy forward. Yeah. So you're never worried about stuffing it. Yeah. It just kind of floats out there. So we left, we left the forward hatch open for so much of the race. Really? Because you just didn't have to worry about water pouring in. Yeah. Oh, that's great. Yeah, it was awesome. So Eric, Eric and I were texting, you know, at various times. I mean, am I allowed to say that? Were you cheating? Um, no, I, that was, you know, starlink has changed the game for everybody. Yeah, it has. And it's one of those things where everybody's gonna be doing it. Yep. There's no policing. Remember in the old days when you weren't allowed to stack sales, but everyone did it anyway? Yeah. They decided, you know what? Screw it. We're gonna let'em do that. Right. I mean, they, they've even changed the rules for this where, um, you know, before you could only access publicly available weather forecasts, you can actually now pay for a meteorologist as long as that guy is offered to work for everybody, even if it's a paid subscription. Hmm. Um, we, that wasn't in our budget. We didn't do that. Um, would it have been nice to have Chris Bedford or somebody phenomenal to do our routing and send us exactly what to do every day? Sure. But didn't have it. We didn't have that. And, and you, and you guys had a game plan. Anyway, so what, what I was gonna say is because you guys were getting right down to it, and I think I woke up really early one morning and. I was looking, I'm like, holy shit. Like they are, if they're looking like they're gonna do it. And I, I'm like, Hey, hey, hey Eric, what's it like? And he goes, everything's great except it's blowing 25. And like, we got a fucking jive. Like I could just feel, I could just feel the tension. I could feel the clenching like, oh God, I mean, don't, please don't let us lose the race with some shit jibe that, that we, I, we managed to pull off. But you guys totally, you guys managed to pull it off and you were doing double pole jives, correct. Yeah. Um, so we had a couple old school, Cal, you know, the Cal 40 people? Cal 40 group. Yeah. And like the knowledge base of having, having sailed people sailing these boats for 60 years doing this race, like you don't lose that data. Um, it's freely available and. And they're happy to talk about it and help work you through it. So, you know, we did a bunch of training and stuff before the race did Islands race. Um, we did some stuff but we didn't, like, we borrowed a second pole and, and so the two pole js were a thing. Um, we. Uh, our poles were slightly different'cause one was borrowed and one was bought. And so we bought this pole and it came off of a bigger boat. And so we had to shorten it. And now he's like, what do we cut it to? And I'm like, I want this number. And so I gave her a number. We rated for that, and then she's like, okay, we're getting the second pole to, you know, borrow. And it was like, I don't know, six inches shorter. Oh, well here's what it's, yeah, right. Figures can't be choosers. We're stoked. So we bought this other pole, but I'm like, well, you know, for the bulk of the racer on starboard early on. So I put the long pole there and said, we're we gotta just maximize while we're here in the slot car zone? Sure. So then we had to, like the first job that we came out of, I'm like, well, the ge, the way the gear was set, we had two, four guys and that was the pole that was gonna ultimately move to the port side. So it. First jab was just a dip pull, um, you know, just like a far 40 or something. And it was daytime easy, no problem, no drama. Um, and those were the jabs that we sort of ever practiced with and raced with. Previously, we'd never done a double pull j and so the double pull jab you, you basically just, you hook the af new after guy in, and right before you jive you just, you got two dongles on the mast and. Before you jive, you just send that topping, lift up, and as the boom's coming across, you trip the other one away and then you bring that pole on deck. And man, those things are so easy. Like I was the only guy up at the front of the boat and I'm doing'em by myself and it was so easy. It was really nice. Wow. Um, so very controlled. Did you guys, did you guys do that when it was blowing? Like is that when you went to those Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, we did those for the whole remain of the race. We did a total of six tribes for the whole race, whole race. We did one, one dip pole and five, um, double poles. We did four tags and six tribes the entire time. It was like, and, and you sailed 150 miles less than any other boat in the race. Yeah. But we, I'll tell you like, that's the other part though is, you know, if you got the pole and the ability to kind of square and manipulate a little bit, yeah. You don't necessarily have to jive on a, on a five, 10 degrees shift because you can just adjust a little bit. So, you know, on a strip boat, you can't do that. If you're on a 52 and it goes 10 degrees, you're like, we gotta capitalize on this. Yeah. Because we're pointed 15 degrees the wrong way now. Right. So. You just sail the boat so differently. Um, and I think being true to, and that goes to a 52 as well, like you gotta sail that boat like it's meant to be sailed. You gotta sail this boat like it's meant to be sailed. Sail sled the same way. So. You gotta say, be true to the way that your boat sails. Don't look around and just think, oh, I gotta do that, I gotta do that. Like, it's not keeping up with the Joneses, it's just being, being your own best. It's, yeah, it's keeping up with the Cal 40. That's, that's what it's doing. You know? And I mean, I just love, and I, and I got that vibe, you know, as we, as we chatted and you know, and I, I read what you said, you know, you obviously had some, I mean, Greg Reynolds, Steven Driscoll. Um, yourself, you know, uh, Ali's a a good sailor and I don't know much about Graham, but, um, you know, you had a nice core of people and I just, it, it felt like you guys had, I don't think it felt like, I think this is just true. You guys had a plan. You stuck to it. Stuck to it, and you know, damn if it didn't work. Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty much the way it went down. I know. It's, so how was life on board? So what, by the way, how many, uh, what was your elapsed time? Um, 12 days, 13 hours or something like that. 12 doesn't change. Uh, god knows I, we got plenty of, uh, snack and food updates, and I love how you threw Greg under the bus about 900 times for just like being a, the snack fiend on board. Um, he is. Was that surprising? Like, dude, no, not at all. Um, you know, when. And Allie first bought the boat, like, you know, she, she, she bought the boat and she's like, I'm gonna do Transpac. And, you know, she, her cousin Graham, they've done multiple trans packs together. Um, and so he was an obvious choice and I was, I was always begging her. I'm like, listen, we're doing Transpac. And then she's like, okay, okay, we're gonna do it. And she's like, we'll do it in, you know. Kicked the can down. She was gonna kept trying to kick the can down the road. I'm like, Nope, we're going next year for two years from now. So it was kind of a two year program and, uh, and I'm like, Nope, we're going in 25. And she's like, okay. So boat got all tickled. Um, and she goes, who else are we taking? And I go, well, I'm not sailing to Hawaii without Steven Driscoll. Like he, I mean, they've been, they, they recently got married. Um, they've been dating and. For decades at this point. Okay. So, uh, but Steven Driscoll a great friend of mine and he's one of those guys just quiet, works hard and he, he obviously of the Driscoll family knows boats like nobody else. And he was an integral part of like, totally redoing this boat. And I go, if, if something goes wrong out there, like some gum engine thing that. That's not the rest of us. We need Steven. I'm like, I ain't going if he's not going, so. Mm-hmm.