Ken
Roper (The General) |
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Born Walter Reed Army Hospital, Washington DC, 11 Dec 1929. Education: Active duty in US Army 25 years (June 1952 to July 1977). Served in Germany (3 yrs), Korea (1 yr), VietNam (25 mos. in command of 3 combat units) and various assignments in the US (east and west coasts and others in between). Qualifications: Became interested in the Singlehanded Transpac Race when I anchored in Hanalei Bay after arriving in Hawaii from a voyage to French Polynesia in 1978. The first of those races has just finished and many of the competitors were still anchored in the bay, At that time, I was sailing a very lightly built, fin keeled wooden sloop which I had owned since 1971. After sailing that boat approximately 30,000 miles, I purchased 'Harrier' in 1983. After selling the old boat almost immediately, I began preparing the new boat for the singlehanded transpac. Actually, I did very little in that regard other than install a servo-pendulum wind vane and a companionway spray dodger, after which I sailed to La Paz, Baja Mexico, and back to Los Angeles as a checkout for the race. I entered and finished the 1984 Singlehanded Transpac Race and have competed off and on ever since for a total of ten (10!) races. The 2010 race will DEFINITELY be my last one! My primary means of navigation have evolved into electric auto-pilot steering (a fairly large number of cockpit mounted APs are carried) with GPS to locate myself. This compares to the use of the servo-pendulum vane and a sextant in the 'old days'. I find that the electric APs (primarily Raytheon 4000 and 4000GP) operating the tiller give me a course with less yawing downwind compared to my vane steerer (which will be left at home), once we get the chutes up. Cooking is via a one-burner propane stove. I do have a Swedish stove-top oven which fits it nicely and allows me to bake potatoes, one of my staple 'live' foods. Other such foods are pretty much limited to onions, apples and oranges, since I have no refrigeration and don't carry ice on the race, too much weight and takes up valuable storage space. Other foods are "dead food“ (pasta, rice, cereal etc.) and "dog food" (anything in a can, look at corned beef hash as it comes out of the can sometime. Certainly looks like what we used to feed the family canine). I don't carry RADAR, but thanks to Bob Johnson in the 2006 race, I am equipped with an AIS detector and display which is worth it's weight in platinum as a safety device in blue water voyaging. My ears aren't good after a career of flying (noisy!) and combat engineering (lots of demolition work, weapons firing, etc, also noisy) so I have the AIS device feeding a LOUD alarm which wakes me up without fail when it goes off. Other problems with the boat while I'm asleep usually wake me up since my body is pretty well attuned to the boat after sailing it 100,000 miles or so during the last 25 years. I use a pretty simple sleep routine which pretty well follows normal shore side timing except when we're near land or heavily traveled shipping lanes. The main thing is not to allow myself to get too tired. Then mistakes become more likely. I've enjoyed the various singlehanded transpacs over the last twenty odd years. They are never the same, but in some ways they are always the same, speaking of the almost uniformly enjoyable friendships made during the races. That is the primary reason I do the race. The competition is nice, but the friendships are priceless! And then there's the belt buckle, ..a very expensive belt buckle, that's for sure! Fair Winds Harry McK. Roper, Jr. Navigation: GPS Steering: electric autopilot Communication: HAM, SSB Food: live food, dead food, dog food | |||||