Dawn brought no fresh hope as there was not a wind ripple in sight. The day followed the night pattern and the miles remained long. Afternoon saw the first of the division two boats calling it quits. This boat had not provisioned carefully and had to admit to the Coast Guard that he had insufficient fuel to motor the hundred miles to the finish, despite the fact that it was a requirement of the race to carry enough fuel to be able to motor in.
An exchange between the embarrassed yacht and the CG ensued about where there might be diesel oil and phone numbers were exchanged for the CG to call for availability. These were the only moments of light relief in a long frustrating day.
Several more yachts threw in the towel and Skipper and Rudy went through the permutation that may result in us getting to the finish, but options had run out and they felt that a prudent early retirement and the prospect of rest ready for the Victoria leg outweighed hanging on and hoping against all hope. So at around 7:00pm he instructed Felix to make the radio call.
We motored on for almost 10 hours, arriving at Ucluelet at 6:00am on Tuesday. The race was called off soon after we arrived as the rules require 50% to finish fore the race to count, and over half of the yachts had retired and were motoring to the finish.
Dave
