The little boat that could, the Antrim 27 ET, won it's class in the recent Pacific Cup to Hawaii by nearly three hours, and also scored ninth overall as well. Sailed by Todd Hedlin, designer Jim Antrim, and Liz Baylis, they did a remarkable job in the race and it is a story deserving of some insight. This InnerView was conducted by Sportboat. Enjoy.

Congratulations on your second Pacific Cup win. Tell us what you did differently this time around in preparation. Any new gear or sails?

E.T.
We took no new sails at all, except for the heavy weather jib that was a new requirement in the NOR, and which we didn't use. So every sail we hoisted had already been to Hawaii before. Our most important bit of new "gear" was a pair of padded Musto shorts for each of us that we wore either over our foulies or as plain shorts during the warmer days once we got a little south. Minimizing butt wetness and abrasion was a major lesson we learned from the first PacCup we did on ET.

How did you store the gear on the small boat as far as where the weight went?

E.T.
This was the biggest and most important change for us from the last PacCup.We moved weight much further aft. In the previous race we had food, some personal gear and some supplies stored in the air-tank lockers under and forward of the mast. For this year's race we put in an additional upper bunk in the port quarter berth and stowed all of our food supply in the lower port bunk. In the previous race we stowed our four 5-gallon water jugs essentially amidships, under the companion way. We moved our to-be-used-last jug all the way aft below deck to the starboard stern of the boat. Last race we stowed our raft in the forward end of our cockpit locker, and this race we stowed the raft in the aft end of the locker. This race we kept all our personal gear other than wet foulies aft alongside the food and supplies. And finally, we simply took less food stuff since we found out last time that we ate about half as much food as we thought we might eat. So we were lighter, and our weight was centered much more aft in the boat this year. When we were ready to leave the dock, the bottom of our gudgeon was actually hitting the surface of the water -- we were dragging our stern. Our reason for shifting weight more aft was that we felt as though we were bow heavy and ploughing along in the first PacCup. All of us felt that our downwind performance was helped significantly by going a little lighter and centering our weight much more aft for this year.

With 600#'s of extra gear, how did it change the behavior of the boat?

E.T.
There are interesting changes. With weight, upwind the boat gets knocked around a little less by waves compared to when the boat is empty and being sailed single or double handed. But it wasn't significantly different feeling to me than sailing with a full crew, other than not pointing as well. But the Antrim 27 is not an upwind boat, whether crewed or not. Downwind, with the extra weight, it simply takes more breeze to get the boat up onto a plane, although our stowage plan this year made the difference much less noticeable. The extra weight, all below decks, helps significantly in getting out of roundups! We had two killer knockdowns caused by major windshift gusts and for those, recovery was an all hands effort. But for normal Antrim 27 roundups, almost always the driver alone could release sheets and vang, wait for the next wave to start lifting the stern, and then steer down hard (rudder literally over 90 degrees, parallel to the stern) and drive out of them. We could usually do this even with the other two crew occasionally asleep to leeward.

What kind of watch system did you have - was it tag team singlehanding?

E.T.
We did a rotating 3 hours on, three off. Around the clock, my watches started at 8:00 and ended at 11:00, then started at 2:00 and ended at 5:00. Jim always went on watch at 6:00 and went off at 9:00, on at 12:00 and off at 3:00. Liz was on at 10:00 and off at 1:00, on at 4:00 and off at 7:00. With this system, each of us would start the first hour of our watches overlapping with the final hour of the person we took over from. Then we would have an hour alone, singlehanding. And then for the last hour, there would be another hour of overlapping. The pretty standard routine for all of us was that, as soon as you started your watch, even if only half awake, you would immediately take the helm for half an hour. This gave the person who had been driving alone the previous hour a break that he or she usually REALLY needed, especially at night with no moon. Then, to keep the new watch guy fresh, the person going off watch would take the helm for the next half hour. Then for the person remaining on watch, it was singlehanding for the next hour with two people off watch. So during the 3-hour on watch, there would be two hours on the helm, normally. And even for the two half-hour stints of driving while two persons were on watch, it was often single-handing since the other person usually got a cup of coffee, took a leak, stretched, took off or put on some clothes, etc. We wanted two people on watch all the time at night in the squalls, so for the last three nights of the race we did four hours on and two hours off.

What type of spinnaker(s) did you use?

E.T.
Our work horse spinnaker was a class-sized Ullman. We used a Pineapple shy kite at night in the squalls and at the very beginning for reaching. We used our Pineapple class kite a few times, but primarily as a fill-in for the Ullman. We also had a high-clewed heavy wind, full sized North kite, which we used the first time we did the race when we got into heavy breeze trade winds, but we didn't run into those conditions this year, so we didn't use that kite at all. The Pineapple shy kite and the Ullman class kites were terrific. Both have a broad steering range -- you could play around with driving on the waves when you were alert and "on", and both sails were pretty forgiving when you were exhausted, your driving sucked and you wandered all over the place.

While you all sailed the boat - what specific roles did each of you have?

E.T.
In addition to driving: Jim navigated, doing roll call, keeping the log, monitoring how all the boats in the fleet did relative to their ratings, reviewing our weather map downloads. Jim also was the primary boat inspector. Liz was superchick the first couple of days while Jim and I both were queasy, or worse -- she did everything that had to be done on the boat, practically. For the whole trip, Liz was primary radio operator outside of roll call -- she downloaded weather and did our sailmail transmissions. Liz was primary neatness and orderliness person too. I was primary cook and trip correspondent on the email. S/A: Isn't there just a ton of noise on the boat, how do you get any rest at all? E.T.: When it was windy and the boat was planing, it was noisy below. There were a few times that it was hard to sleep. Liz routinely used earplugs. I used exhaustion. Jim didn't seem to need as much sleep as Liz and me. All three of us had the experience of falling asleep while driving in the middle of the night -- it's a weird adrenaline rush when you get startled awake holding onto the helm!

Did anything stay dry?

E.T.
Not any of us on deck. But with the dodger up almost everything below decks stayed dry -- we always had dry bunks and dry clothes in our gear bags. I wouldn't recommend this trip to any Antrim 27 owners unless they install a dodger.

You appeared to sail a more Southerly path then most of your division. Why?

E.T.
As Kame Richard's of Pineapple sails says, "If you guys aren't planing you aren't winning." We know that we aren't a good pointing boat. We started reaching off a little practically as soon as we got out the gate. Our goal was to set a kite as soon as we could without having any east in our course, knowing that we would see the wind swing east as we got south. We traded speed for direction.

Would you do it again on an Antrim 27?

E.T.
Well ..... we've done it twice. It's hard to do anything on the boat, other than drive or sleep, without being in someone else's way. It's hard not having any standing headroom below, other than in the companionway under the dodger. On the other hand, on the 27, it's an exciting and satisfying ride, and sailing with Jim Antrim and Liz Baylis, both world-class sailors and great shipmates, is an experience I'd rather do again than never repeat at all. So, yeah, I would do it again, but I'd rather do it short-handed on a new boat that the three of us started dreaming about during the race. The perfect Pacific Cup boat, an "Antrim 40". Stay tuned.....

There have been a few idiots who have called into question the 85 PCR rating. We know the PCR of 85 is based on the 78 PHRF rating and the extra weight of the boat. Anything else you can add to discredit the doubters?

E.T.
While the rating number is nice, our course had to be different from most other boats -- since we aren't good upwind pointers and since we also can't sail deep, being a sprit boat, we had to sail a much longer below-rhumbline course to start, and then had to zig-zag into the finish over the final three or four days when the wind was fully aft. Without looking at our log to give an exact number, I'd guess that our course was at least 200 to 250 miles longer than rhumb line, and considerably longer than anyone else in our division sailed. Being light and with our stern-hung rudder lifting out of the water on waves, we had a good thirty round-ups and two flat out half-hour knockdowns. The round-ups/knockdowns added a lot of time for us that most boats didn't have to deal with. Additionally, the race committee shortened the calculated distance of the race by 100 miles (1950 miles instead of the great circle actual distance of 2050 miles), favoring lower rated boats (meaning everyone else in our division). I feel very satisfied that we won primarily due to performance, not due to rating. We prepared the boat well and had no significant breakdowns, we sailed with minimum crew and as lightly as we could in order to maximize speed, we pushed hard all of the time, we selected a good course for the boat. Even with all that, we still had a pretty close race, correcting out on the Mumm 30, Rainbow, by just three hours.