Thank you everyone for the well wishes and support! This has been an amazing experience, and it helped knowing that so many people I didn't even know were rooting for me.
I learned a lot during the race, and certainly could apply that knowledge if I were to race again. However, as much as I would like to race in the Pacific Cup again, not on my boat. Man, was that a lot of abuse. I don't think it can be appreciated until you do it. I have a much greater respect for the Morgan, as it kept taking it, when so many other boats didn't, and showed up with all kinds of problems. Broken booms, broken steering, broken stays.
My list of damage is short, and the most expensive thing is a missing winch handle, which we think was thrown overboard during a jibe, but we are not sure. Also on the list is a broken toilet seat (anyone know of a replacement seat with stainless or bronze hinges? Plastic is just gonna break when a 200 lb man is bouncing on it.) The bail on the spinnaker crane to hold the halyard block. Amazing that that broke and the spinnaker didn't blow out. But not surprising as the night before it failed we were flying the spinnaker squall after squall with winds gusting to 30 kts. My knot meter failed about halfway across. I just replaced the paddlewheel with an airmar sonic transducer before leaving. It didn't work after installing it, then mysteriously started working. I think it is defective. Lastly, I replaced my steering cables not long ago, and they are settling in and stretched a bit, so my steering has a lot of play in it now.
As for the abuse, every time the spinnaker started to collapse and then filled, that shock load is immense. This mostly was not light wind spinnaker flying, this was 20 kts, with squalls gusting much higher. Down below, the bang sounded like something breaking, again, and again, thousands of times. During squalls, there was often a lurch forward enough to knock you down if you weren't holding on. And oh man, the Morgan will surf in these conditions. Often we were over 9 kts for 15 seconds or longer. Hitting 13 knots briefly a number of times. The catch of course is that speed then drops to 5 kts or so after the swell passes under you.
Things I learned. Only one person (the navigator) should ever see the GPS or chart plotter. This was my first PacCup. most of my crew had done it several times before. I don't consider myself a great navigator. So I was sharing information and taking input. Which was great when we all agreed what to do. When I called for our first gybe, it felt like mutiny. We had a wind shift, and we were lifted well off course. All of the information I had from the gribs and weather fax was that the shift would stay. But the rest of the crew was convinced it would shift back in a few hours. One argument is that it shouldn't matter, if it shifts back, we gybe back. But, it was dusk and we were not likely to gybe at night. After some arguing, I opted to dowse the spinnaker and sail all night on white sails. That way, even though we were slower, we could gybe back and forth and follow the shifts. There were none. We stayed on the new gybe for more than 24 hours. We would have best kept the kite up and gybed, as I originally wanted.
Also, we flew the shy kite nearly the entire time. Again, because the crew refused to fly the bigger #2 spinnaker. The shy kite is awesome. If a boat only carries one kite, that is the one to get. When over trimmed, it has a really wide range of sailing angles, is easy to control, and doesn't need an active trimmer. A single driver can easily handle it. The shy kite is also seemingly indestructible. As mentioned before, the stainless steel bail broke before the kite blew out. It did get a dime sized tear at some point, probably be dragging it out of the water over the lifelines after the bail broke. The shy kite handles heavy winds, and will fly in light air as well. But, in light air, the #2 is faster. The crew was concerned that the #2 kite was a 3 person job (driver, trimmer, and grinder) and given that half the crew was off watch we didn't have enough crew to fly it. I disagree, and we flew it for about an hour while I was on the helm. It was certainly more work but I thought it manageable. It was faster, and this was a race.
I also fought with sailing angles. Much of the race was sailed much deeper than optimum for a Morgan. Some of this was decided by the weather routing software, and some of it was by the crew using their own handheld GPS and sailing directly to Hawaii.
We also stopped for about 20 minutes while I swam on the boat and "cleared a line." I didn't know it until I was in the water, but a line went out the vent hole in the bottom of the aft locker. Not seeing any lines overboard, it looked like something caught on the keel.
Plus, we were fishing, and caught a small one. We probably drug it for hours before it was noticed. I don't know how much that slows the boat, but I am sure it makes a noticeable difference over several days.
Thanks again. For those that have facebook, I would appreciate the follow. Many more pictures are there, as i can post them quickly from my phone, even via Satellite while offshore.
https://www.facebook.com/followeliana/
https://www.facebook.com/warren.9999
And my blog:
http://www.holybee.net/blog