Hello from Kauai!
Black Feathers arrived in Hanalei Bay during the 19th day of the race. She won second in her class (small monohulls) and corrected out 8th in the fleet of 22 boats. This 47 year old Cal-20 performed beautifully with the only significant problem being the 5 year old fiberglass rudder broke at the waterline about 1200 miles into the race. The rudder was replaced with the original all mahogony 1961 rudder, and no further problem was experienced. I did, however, loose my balance during the rudder replacement and break the glass on the solar panal. It continued to work well throughout the race, but I know it is toast. I took no waves into the cockpit as I had feared might happen.
The boat was steered the entire way with the Monitor Windvane. It worked very well, but had a bit of a problem when the light weight boat would get kicked about by some waves. This primarily happened when I was going wing on wing with the main and jib. When I went to two poled out jibs with no main, she made just as good time, but was steady as an arrow on her course. Our normal daily run was about 130 miles.
The only comfort concern I had was being a bit cramped in the cabin because of all the extra gear I was required to carry. The weight of all the gear (liferaft, water, food, etc) was 900 pounds which was distributed fairly evenly throughout the boat.
For those of you interested, you can find more info at the Singlehanded Sailing Society site (www.sfbaysss.org). Also Norcal Sailing has some video only. If you check this out, you can see a short video of my finish if you go to the Archives and see the finishes that occurred on August 1st. (www.norcalsailing.com).
Let it always be clear that the Cal-20 is truly a tough little craft worthy of her reputation!
May we cross tacks soon, Robert Crawford of Black Feathers