I posted this a couple of weeks ago on the Open Forum and thought I would try here.

My crew, Laura Sullivan, and I are entered in the 9th Philippines Hobie Challenge to take place Feb. 16-23. This is a 250 nm endurance race through the Philippine archipelago. We believe we are the first American team to compete in this event.

We are seeking sponsors to help us with some of the cost of participating. Specifically, we are looking for a title sponsor to cover our entry fee. We need another supporting sponsor to cover the charter fee. And finally, we are looking for product sponsors to help us outfit boat and crew for this adventure.

If you, or someone you know, is interested in getting involved with this event, please contact me at nelson.peter(at)comcast.net.

Thanks very much.

A 250 nanometer race can hardly be called an endurance race, unless you are bacteria.

Good one! Down in the Philippines, there may be some bacteria along for the ride. Who knows?

That would be 'nm' as in 'nautical miles'!

Wow! Peter that is absolutely FANTASTIC! My crew and I wish you the best of luck in your race. I have been watching the videos and following that race since I discovered it about 2 years ago. It seems like a fantastic event, but boy does it look exhausting! Plus, navigating around the islands of the Archipelago, i hope your GPS is working! Be sure to keep us updated on how you are performing!

I'll be sure to post updates. Not sure if we will have internet access during the week. We will be tent camping on remote islands. Wed. night we will be at a 'resort' (whatever that is!) and they may have internet. Also at the beginning and finish I expect internet.

I am in touch with one of the past organizers and a competitor, and he says it is about 60% downwind, 30% reaching, and 10% upwind. That's probably a good thing as I didn't want to get stuck out on the wire for hours at a time. As it is, on the reaches we will probably single-trap and rotate who is out.

The main competition will be Bob Engvida from Australia. He sails with Aaron Worrall and Brad "Worstie" Wilson. The latter 2 finished 13th at the Worlds in Fiji and won the North Americans in easy fashion after sitting out the last race. There will be others to watch as well -- particularly some of the veterans of the race. But because the course changes every year, at least they won't have an advantage knowing the course.

For those who are interested, the race is 7 days long. There is an inshore series, consisting of 5 buoy races, and an offshore series, consisting of the 5 days of long-distance racing. On Sat., Feb. 15th, we take a plane ride from Manila to Legaspi City, then a 2-hour bus ride to Gubat. We will spend the rest of the day getting settled and 'scrutineer" (as they call it) the boats.

On Sunday, Feb. 16th, we race one practice race in the morning, have lunch, then race two buoy races in the afternoon. The next day we are off! The first leg is the longest -- 70 nm. I am attaching the waypoints so if you want to upload into Google Earth, you can see where we are headed.

When we finish in Siargao, we are not finished. The next day we race 3 more buoy races. Then the awards party! It should be quite fun -- camping with 39 other competitors for a week. I imagine we should be pretty good friends by the end!

I am working on some sponsorship and hope to have some positive things to report on that next week. Stay tuned. In the meantime, check out the waypoints.

Peter,

How is the planning going? How many extra crates of gear are you taking? Anything special to deal with the "environment"?

A little more than 2 weeks away. The excitement must be building.

OK. Here is an update...

We are still negotiating with one company to be title sponsor. We had interest from a couple of other companies, but we were so late coming to the party that one said 'No thanks' and the other said "Talk to me afterwards about sponsoring." So we have one company left and we should know something by the end of the week.

Sponsors to date include: Murray's, Zhik, Barz Optics, Harken, Larabar, Layline, Hobie Cats NW, Sperry, and our own Hobie Fleet 95. BIG thanks to all of them for stepping up and helping us out.

We have our gear pretty well organized & packed. Mine is in 2 dry bags -- one dry bag will go on the support boat to the next spot. It contains sleeping bag, tent, clothes and stuff. The other, smaller dry bag will go on the boat with us. When we get to Gubat I plan to unpack and repack everything.

On the trampoline we are planning to take along one smaller dry bag (to carry non-essentials like the 2 liters of extra water required for emergencies, paddle, etc.), 2 tramp bags to carry quick-access items (like shackles, Larabars, etc.), and a TackTick compass. I will mount the compass directly aft of the mast with the dry bag aft of that. Having all this extra gear on the tramp will make for some interesting boat maneuvers! I hope we don't have to carry all that crap on the buoy races!!

Waypoints have been entered into our GPS as well as Google Earth. I will attempt to attach the Google Earth file so you can view the route.

Additional information is available on the website that is (finally) up. (They swapped servers and it was down for a few critical weeks.) But all is good now. 9th Philippines Hobie Challenge

Been doing some mid-winter training (which is unusual for me this time of year!). Finally, Sailing World has indicated an interest in running the story.

We are looking forward to bringing this 'Survivor'-type event to the US sailors.

As for the route, we expect the first distance leg to be downwind. Tuesday should be mostly a reach with a little downwind. The 3rd day (Wed.) we will be going downwind in between 2 islands in what is essentially a salt water river. That evening, Wed. evening we will camp at a resort at the "mouth of the river". Can you say "warm shower"? Sure ya can!

The 4th day (Thurs.) should be another reach. And the last day will be the most difficult and the most fun -- surfing downwind on huge Pacific swells for 57 nm!!

The winds are predominantly northeasterly, although southeasterlies could change some of the legs to upwind! Current will be a tactical factor. The islands will change the wind direction, so we are expecting lifts and headers.

Competition includes mostly Aussies -- Aaron Worrall ran away with the 16 NACs in Alameda last summer and was, like, 19th at Worlds. Expect him to dominate. Bob Engwirda has won this event several times (sailing with Aaron and Worstie) and will be a huge factor. Bruce Tardrew will also be tough. I just noticed 2 teams, including Andrew Locke, are a scratch. We are down to 18 teams and we haven't even started yet!

Mark Haswell (PHP) has won the event before. Never sailed against him before, so don't know him. Tony Stearns (NMI) is a veteran of this event. But we have beaten them at 2 Worlds, so I am hoping we can three-peat. The others I don't know about. So all-in-all, I see about 6 of the teams being tough, with the others being unknown.

Update? Did the weather clear?

We arrived on Sat. and met a tropical depression! Conditions as reported were: 35-45k, 18' seas, 10 sec. intervals -- not the stuff you want to launch a beach cat into! After 2 days we moved the boats 2 hrs. south (to Mongot) and re-rigged. We started the first leg on Tuesday in 20k and a 12' confused sea leftover from the storm and the 3k current.

But after about an hour of reaching in that, things settled down quite a bit. Too much actually. We had 4 days of light wind and rain after that. The weather simply did not cooperate. But it was still worth it!

Registration was limited to 20 teams. But 8 cancelled before the big show. Then the Dutch team retired after only 20 min. of sailing due to a combination of issues related to boat rigging. That left only 11 teams.

The Aussies dominated the event. Bob "Squirta" Engwirda won with Brad "Worstie" Wilson crewing. Bruce "Tards" Tardrew was 2nd and Aaron Worrall was 3rd. A local Philippine team, Naki, came in 4th followed by us 5th.

We flipped after the start on Tuesday. That put us 5th and well back after the 1st gate, where the course was shortened. The next day was the only leg fully completed -- a 35-miler down a river and across an open stretch of water. The wind was light (again) and the rich got richer. We watched the top 4 teams sail away while our sails slapped. At one point, we were totally becalmed for 20 min. We gave up 25 min. to the 4th place team (Naki) and that was our undoing.

We won the 3rd leg. There was controversy on this one as Worrall and I each filed redress. In the end, my request prevailed and the race was shortened at the first gate. That gate was crazy. The gate was "Rock Gap" -- a gap between 2 rocks we were told was big enough to fit 2 Hobies. Sure enough, we arrived right in front of Squirta double trapped on a beam reach. After a quick douche, we were on the tramp pushing the boat along one of the rocks as we encountered a 180 wind shift in the gap and were getting pushed onto one of the rocks. My crew, Laura Sullivan, reached out to push off and almost squished a rock crab that scurried off!! When we cleared the rock enough, the double-trap wind hit us again and we nearly flipped! It was crazy!

Later that day we were reaching along in light breeze in 3rd, about a mile and half behind Squirta and Tards and a mile in front of Worrall. All of a sudden a squall hit us. We reached off for about 20 min. and when it passed and we could see again we could not see land, any of our competitors, nothing! We weren't familiar enough with the GPS to trust its information. After about 20 tense min. we got it all figured out and continued racing. But there was a period there where we were totally lost in "the big pond" with no sight of anything or anyone!

Later in the afternoon we got picked up and towed the other 20 miles or so to Suluan Is. This island has a dangerous reef entrance and they wanted to get us in before dark. It didn't happen. To make matters worse, the RIB that was towing us had given up its GPS to someone else. At about 7 p.m. local time, in the night, the RIB stopped near the island. We were smack dab in the middle of the reef broadside to the waves. I looked up to see a 7' wave breaking over our trampoline!! To make matters worse, we were still tied up 2nd in line on the tow. We survived the 1st wave and I told Laura to get the knife out and be ready to cut us free. Our screams to the RIB were not being heard. Finally, before a 2nd wave could crash on us, he got the RIB going and towed us out of there -- right onto a 2nd reef! This one wasn't as big as the 1st and a few more screams and we were off that one without any damage. Talk about seeing your life pass in front of you!!

On the final day they towed us out into open water for about 20 miles, set up a start line, and had us race to the finish. This finish also had a reef. There was a lighted buoy marking the entrance, then a 1-mile beat up a lagoon to the resort where the finish was. This was an exciting finish. Worrall led at the buoy, followed by Tards, us, and Squirta.

But Squirta hardened up to cut the corner. We all followed suit. Worrall got the worst of it as he ended up running aground on a small reef/island in the middle of the lagoon. We got rolled by Squirta, we rolled Tards, who then rolled us. We ended up 3rd that night by 1 boat length to Tards and Squirta. It was an exciting finish!!

There are a ton more stories, but I won't take the time here to go into them all. If/when you see me, ask me and I'll unleash!! Great, great time! Really incredible! Hope to do it next year.