Qualifying Sail Details
Flexi Flyer pushed off from a guest slip at South Beach Harbor, in San Francisco, at 0820 hours on Saturday May 25, 2024 to compete in the Spinnaker Cup and then to complete our Pacific Cup 150 mile overnight qualifying sail. Four souls of our Pacific Cup crew were onboard as we motored briefly around the City front into the lee of the piers of Fort Mason to set the main with a single reef. Our start was at 1045 and we beat our way out of the Golden Gate against the incoming flood. We rounded Mile Rock and Lands End and reached off to our first set south of Half Moon Bay. With the westerly breeze driving us to shore, we hoisted the jib and sailed an outside route to achieve better downwind angles run around the Ano Nuevo buoy. After setting on a broad reach down to Davenport with 25 knots behind us, and by the point of Santa Cruz, we then reached across Monterey Bay to finish the race, where we experienced a large, mixed swell, and between 18 and 24 knots of westerly breeze. Upon crossing the finish line in Monterey, we then continued on to Santa Cruz in a circuitous route to complete the qualifying sail. We arrived in Santa Cruz just after 10am on May 26, 2024.