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Photos of the Day: Lipton Cup

July 14 - San Francisco Bay

PICYA's Lipton/Knight/Little Lipton Cups on Saturday set the scene for some hair-raising sailing in what are, after all, typical July conditions on the Bay. Rob Moore fired off some shots dripping with adrenalin before winging his way to Hawaii to cover the finish of the TransPac (see next item). We'll have full coverage, including results, in the August issue of Latitude 38.

Photos Latitude/Rob


Barn Door but No Record

July 14 - Honolulu, HI

Philippe Kahn's R/P 77 Pegasus crossed the finish line around 2:30 this morning HST to win the Barn Door Trophy for the second straight time in the TransPac. Because of light air in the middle of the race, Pegasus missed the elapsed time record of 7 days 11 hours 41 minutes 27 seconds (set by Roy E. Disney in 1999) by just a few hours. Kahn really wanted the record. He had a top-flight crew and practiced 24 days for the eight-day race. Equally disappointed were crew Mark Rudiger and Jeff Madrigali. The two have been on elapsed-time winning boats five times yet have still not broken the record. Rudiger, one of the world's best navigators, said they sailed an almost perfect race.


Philippe Kahn at the helm of Pegasus 77. Other crew members are (from left) Adam Beashel, Morgan Larson, 13-year-old Samuel (Shark) Kahn and Sean (Doogie) Couvreux.
Photo Courtesy Pegasus 77

Roy E. Disney's R/P 75 Pyewacket finished five hours after Pegasus. She had taken a more northerly course and sailed into lighter air.


This is the 14th time that Patty Disney has greeted husband Roy E. Disney (on side of boat) and son Roy Pat (at mast) along TransPac Row.

Corrected time honors for fleet are still up in the air. Top contenders include Bill Turpin's TP-52 Alta Vita and Karl Kwok's TP-52 Beau Jeste. They are expected to finish 24 hours after Pegasus, sometime tonight. Also within striking distance is Stan and Sally Honey's Cal 40 Illusion, which is expected about noon Hawaiian time today.


Lady Bleu II, taking full advantage of a head start for the Aloha
class, breezes past Diamond Head in 30 knots of wind as the first boat to finish.

Six of the Aloha cruising class entries finished before Pegasus, having started early. The first boat to finish was Roger Kuske's Dynamique 62 Lady Bleu II. All of the early finishers had light air crossings until the last 25 miles in the Molokai Channel, where four tore chutes.

For more info, visit www.transpacificyc.org.


Midnight Moonlight Maritime Marathon

July 14 - Belvedere

By contrast to Saturday's daytime racing (see top item), the wind fizzled for Saturday night's PHRF fun run up to Vallejo and back. Profligate reports that they had crazy, confused wind from the Raccoon Strait start to the Brothers Islands north of the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, followed by a nice run to Vallejo, after which the wind shut down for the beat back to the San Francisco YC. None of the other multihulls finished either, but nine monohulls did make it back, with the Wyliecat 30 Silkye correcting out first, followed by the Farr 40s Shadow and Blue Chip. Twenty-one boats turned out to enjoy the fabulous moon.


Everest Horizontal Recovered

July 14 - St. Georges, Bermuda

Tim Kent, skipper of the Open 50 which lost her bulb keel and capsized last month in the second leg of the Bermuda 1-2, tells of Everest Horizontal's recovery:

"After two unsuccessful attempts to locate Everest Horizontal, we left St. Georges on the 38-foot charter fishing boat Tenacious at 8:00 pm on July 1, heading to the last position reported of the upturned hull of Everest. On board was what can only be described as a Dream Team for the audacious attempt to recover a 50-ft boat in the middle of the ocean with a 38-ft fishing boat. On board were Sloan Wakefield, the skipper of Tenacious, Steve Hollis and Paul LaVigne of Ocean Sails, our diver David Calhoun, Ton Wadson and Godfrey Simpson and myself.

"After an uncomfortable overnight passage to the search area, we began looking for the boat at dawn. As noon, then 1:00 pm crept by, the mood on board became grim...the boat had to be back at the dock by Thursday morning [July 3] and we were running out of time. Then at 2:00 pm, Sloan spotted something orange...the keel! Sloan spotted this bare-eyed, something that the three folks looking through binoculars could not see.

"We hustled to the site to find EH almost completely awash; she was floating stern-up, awash all the back to her keel - FULL of water. David donned his dive gear and he and I took a dinghy to the boat to check the condition of the rig. As David was getting ready to dive, I put on a mask and looked below...at carnage. The mast was broken into three pieces above the deck, the foredeck hatch had opened and the spinnaker and Code Zero had washed out and were tangled in the rig. Clearly we were going to have to cut everything away.

"I went back to the boat and got Steve, and the two of us, with David's help under the boat, rigged a line around the hull to the top of the keel and tied it down. We all returned to the Tenacious and attempted to pull the boat upright, but no dice...the angle was all wrong on the keel. Steve and I returned to the boat and rigged a new line, again with David's help. This time, as Sloan gave Tenacious the gas, Everest rolled upright!

"Steve, Tom and I packed the gas pump that Tom had brought along and returned to Everest. With the pump at full tilt, the boat slowly started to rise in the water, even more so as the three of us cut lines and popped pins to release the rig.

"At 8:00 pm, six hours after we found her, Everest Horizontal was under tow to Ordinance Island in St. Georges.

"This brief account can not begin to tell the story of this remarkable effort. Everest is now clean and dry, with her diesel engine running and ready to propel her home. Thanks to all of the wonderful people who made this possible, particularly Steve and Suzanne Hollis of Ocean Sails here in Bermuda. I wandered into their shop dispirited and out of options and they made this incredible mission possible."

Tim promises photos, including dive shots, on his Web site soon: www.everesthorizontal.com.


West Point Marina Project Goes Before the BCDC

July 14 - Redwood City

Bob Wilson writes, "I am sending you some information regarding the progress towards building a new marina in the South Bay in the hopes that you will help publicize an important event that is happening at the BCDC next week on July 17. The project is the West Point Marina to be located on West Point Slough just off Redwood Creek in Redwood City, adjacent to the new South Port office development and near the Port of Redwood City loading facilities. The West Point Marina project is at a critical point. All agencies except the BCDC have already approved it. To move ahead the project needs BCDC approval, and there is a hearing at 1:00 pm on Thursday, July 17, in Oakland to consider this project for approval. It will be held at the MetroCenter Auditorium at 101 Eighth Street in Oakland.

"Building new marinas is a rare occurrence due to the lengthy and expensive approval process. We boaters have so few destination marina options already and those in the South Bay are diminishing all the time. The West Point Marina project was conceived by Mark Sanders and has been shepherded through the approval process by him for more than 15 years! It is being located in an area that was an environmental time bomb until Mark had it cleaned up as part of an arrangement with the old Leslie Salt Company. As such it is a rare project on the water's edge that has been enthusiastically supported by the community, local governments and environmental groups.
 
"Readers can lend a hand by coming out to the meeting in force to express their support. You may recall we lost the Peninsula Marina in Redwood City to developers two years ago. Due to lack of dredging we lost the entire Palo Alto marina and effectively the Alviso marina as well. This is a rare chance for Bay Area boaters to participate directly in the process of determining the direction of development of Bay Area boating resources by attending the BCDC meeting and making a one or two-minute statement ."


YOTREPS

July 14 - The Pacific Ocean and Cyberspace

Who is out making passages in the Pacific and what kind of weather are they having? The YOTREPS daily yacht tracking page has moved to www.bitwrangler.com/psn.


Weather Updates

July 14 - Pacific Ocean

San Francisco Bay Weather

Check out this guide to San Francisco Bay Navigational Aids: http://sfports.wr.usgs.gov/sfports.html.

To see what the winds are like on the Bay and just outside the Gate right now, check out http://sfports.wr.usgs.gov/wind.

The National Weather Service site for San Francisco Bay is at www.wrh.noaa.gov/Monterey.

California Coast Weather

Looking for current as well as recent wind and sea readings from 17 buoys and stations between Pt. Arena and the Mexican border? Here's the place - which has further links to weather buoys and stations all over the U.S.: www.ndbc.noaa.gov/Maps/Southwest.shtml.

Pacific Winds and Pressure

The University of Hawaii Dept. of Meteorology page posts a daily map of the NE Pacific Ocean barometric pressure and winds.

Pacific Sea State

Check out the Pacific Ocean sea states at: http://www.mpc.ncep.noaa.gov/RSSA/PacRegSSA.html.
For views of sea states anywhere in the world, see http://www.oceanweather.com/data.


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