Torresen Sailing Site: How is funding and sponsorship coming for the California Challenge ?  How far are you from your goals ?  How can people and companies become involved ?

:   The funding and sponsorship for my campaign has been going well but we are still short of our goals. The campaign is still looking for title sponsorship and is negotiating with a number of potential sponsors at this
time. We have done well with what we have achieved although it has been
very hard due to the fact that the campaign's most expensive time is
rebuilding the boat and that has taken place prior to when sponsors are
most interested in becoming involved so far before the start date. The
budget for the campaign is about a million dollars and offers a pretty
great value. We have been designing custom sponsorship packages and can
continue to do so for sponsor requests which is the best way for a sponsor
to get value from their investment.

To see the opportunities available to California Challenge sponsors please see their sponsors website page.

Torresen Sailing Site: Comment on the following description of the Around Alone course: While Legs 1 & 4 are important they are essentially a delivery voyage to and from the site of the real racing: the Southern Ocean ?

: Legs 1& 4 are in fact where a winning campaign performs it's best. There is no question that a competitor that is serious about doing well in the race will establish his/her lead in the 1st leg and cinch his victory in
leg 4. The southern ocean legs are an important time to realize when to
back off and save you and your boat for a later day. When your doing 300
mile days a 50 mile lead isn't as big a deal as it could be on leg 1or 4.

Torresen Sailing Site:  Since you indicate that you feel Legs 1 & 4 are key......what kind of research into the weather are you doing ? Will you employ a weather router such as Bob Rice etc. ?

: Competitors in the Around Alone are not permitted to use outside wx briefers so I will not be using a "Bob Rice" type. Legs 1 and 4 are in
fact the most strategic and I have been reviewing past succesfull routes,
given particular wx patterns as well as reviewing different software
programs that are currently available that use boat polars as well as
reported wx to recomend a given course.

Torresen Sailing Site: In several of the last around the world races there have been boats that have capsized.  What are your feelings on how stable your boat is ?

: By design my boat is much more stable in it's positive righting moment than many of the other late model open boats. My boat has a positive righting angle of 125 degrees as opposed to 105-110 degrees of the others.
Righting moment is about compromise and my boat will be slightly faster on
some points of sail as well as slower on others and is a tradeoff I'm
willing to make to know that it is safer and can be pushed harder because
it will recover from southern ocean wipeouts easier.

Torresen Sailing Site: How do you feel that losing your rudder in the Newport-Bermuda race affected your campaign ?  What lessons did you take forward from it.

California Challenge lost her rudder during the June 1997 Newport to Bermuda race.  At 0400 while leading the race the rudder went !  Brad managed to jury rig California Challenge and make it back to Newport.  For this effort Brad received the 1997 US Navy Seamanship Award. The California Challenge website has a full account of this incident.

: Losing my rudder on the way to Bermuda was a confidence building surprise. The purpose of sailing the boat last summer was to get a feel for the boat and see what improvements and modifications I wanted to make
prior to the Around Alone. We knew the rudder had already been replaced
after a failure and needed to be replaced and improved prior to the race
but we hoped it would hold through the summer trials. Fortunately I had
already sailed the boat from Charleston to Newport in a variety of
conditions and had a good feeling for the boat and the changes I wanted to
make to it. I must say that sailing a modern open 50 with a 12 foot draft
without a rudder is very difficult to control and not something I ever want
to do again. The new Hall Spars built rudder is significantly stronger and
much lighter than the previous.

Torresen Sailing Site: Have you any interest in The Race ?  Would you consider a campaign ?

: I think that the race is an interesting idea and will in fact be one of the most viewed sporting events of the era. I have joked with my wife
and fundraising department and shore support crew that the race would be a
logical next step but seems a long way from now with a circumnavigation to
concentrate on. One step at a time is the trick to Singlehanding and Life
so we'll see where we go next after this first little project.