Sonoma Stories: For Jack Tibbetts, simply finishing the sailing race to Hawaii was a victory

Hot sauce and deep sleep were never more dear to Harrison Newton Jesse “Jack” Tibbetts than on his freshly completed, bucket-list sailboat race to Hawaii.

The 28-year-old Santa Rosa City Council member and former competitive skier shared Sunday from Oahu that the most desirable food aboard the 41-foot Defiance went fast after he and his crew of six left San Francisco on July 12.

“People got on the boat and just out of boredom they would eat,” skipper Tibbetts said. Sooner than the crew expected, it was resorting to the cache of freeze-dried and fairly taste-free foods.

“If you added a lot of Tapatío it wasn’t bad,” Tibbetts said.

As for sleep: The Defiance crew split into two teams that every four hours switched from on-duty to off. That meant that opportunities for sleep came in small doses.

“You don’t really sleep because the mast was making tons of noise,” Tibbetts said. In addition, Defiance often pitched and rolled, as ocean-going sailboats do, making true sleep acutely difficult.

So on the occasions that Tibbetts was exhausted and the conditions reasonably calm and quiet, he slept like never before. “It’s the deepest sleep you’ll ever have,” he said.

Tibbetts is executive director of St. Vincent de Paul Sonoma County and the son of Sonoma County medical-group administrator Penny Tibbetts and political and land-use consultant Nick Tibbetts. He and his sailing partners did not win the 20th edition of the biennial Pacific Cup race, but that was never their intention.

Said Tibbetts, “We started by saying, ‘Let’s just cross this ocean and do it in one piece.’”

And that is what they did. In 14 days, the crew of Defiance ate and slept as well as they could, they fixed boat parts that broke and they marveled at the magnificence of the scenes they took it, the sunsets in particular.

A few boats were behind them and a few had left the race when they arrived Thursday on the north shore of Oahu. They’d covered more than 2,400 miles in 14 days. By comparison, the first boat to finish, the hydrofoil-equipped A Fond le Girafon, made the voyage in 11 days. “They just flew over,” Tibbetts said.

The Santa Rosa native, who was 26 when elected to the Santa Rosa City Council in 2016, owns Defiance with three Santa Rosa friends on the crew: Aaron Thule, Brandon Rojas and Mike Meshkov.

Rounding out the team were experienced racers Louise Thilo of Switzerland and Cole Williams-Brauer of Hawaii, who were on an all-woman Pacific Cup team until a change of plans, and Mike Nesta of Stockton.

Everyone on the team is in their 20s except Meshkov, who’s 35. There were scary moments at sea.

One occurred when a loud and jarring thud announced that Defiance had hit something.

“It was like a gunshot went off,” Tibbetts said. “I was down below when it hit.”

The object turned out to be a large fishing crate. The crew was fortunate the impact didn’t damage the hull or rudder.

Even more tense was when the boat’s large, pillow-like spinnaker sail at the bow wrapped around the forestay, the wire rigging that prevents the mast from falling backward.

“That was the biggest challenge of the whole trip,” Tibbetts said.

The crew was hoisting the spinnaker to take advantage of strengthening winds when the sail became wrapped around the rigging wire.

“The flogging of the sail was applying tremendous load on the mast,” Tibbetts said.

So the wrapped spinnaker had to be unhooked from the halyard, the rope used to hoist it up the mast. Tibbetts said Williams-Brauer volunteered to climb the mast to free the spinnaker.

“It was really something to see,” he said. “In about eight feet of sea, sailing forward, the top of the mast is penduluming about 20 feet from side to side and banging forward as the bow hits waves.”

Tibbetts said that despite the rough conditions, Williams-Brauer “got up there faster than a spider monkey, and with trapeze artist-like skill got a hold of the halyard and cut it loose.”

That act typified the teamwork and camaraderie that occurred aboard Defiance. “The crew chemistry was perfect,” Tibbetts said.

And the sunsets, he added, were otherworldly.

“The sunsets, with those huge, cumulonimbus clouds lit up bright orange,” Tibbetts said, “it was like being on a different planet.”

He had some free time while off duty to do some reading.

“I got through one book,” he said.

What sort of book do you suppose it was?

The late Robert F. Kennedy’s “To Seek a Newer World.”

As anyone would expect, having led and completed an ocean race with no significant mishaps leaves Tibbetts feeling good about the accomplishment and grateful for the opportunity and everyone who had a hand in it.

As he played tourist on Oahu these past few days with his fiancée, Ali Williams, and his mother, who flew to Hawaii to meet him, he said the experience of leaving the people closest to him for two weeks made him ever more keenly aware of the value of his relationships.

Tibbetts said he’ll fly back to Santa Rosa late today, eager to be navigating the challenges and opportunities of terra firma.

You can reach Staff Writer Chris Smith at 707 521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com