TransPac Report
July 11 - Pacific Ocean
In yesterday's morning report, the fleet
was reporting very slow going. Last night, however, Philippe
Kahn on Pegasus 77 was reporting an improvement in conditions
- see below. At this stage in the game, Stan Honey and Sally
Lindsay have reclaimed corrected time honors with their Cal 40
Illusion, while Seafire, another Cal 40, has moved
into third overall. The TransPac 52 Beau Geste is in second.
Rich Reports reports: "The slowest
elapsed time ever in 41 previous TransPacific Yacht Races since
1906 was five minutes shy of 24 days by William Merry's Viking
Childe, a 42-foot ketch from Long Beach, in 1939. That was
the only TransPac to start in San Francisco, and actually was
140 miles shorter than the 2,225-nautical mile course from Los
Angeles in play since 1941. For that route, the longest race
was a bit over 21 1/2 days by Irving H. Baltzer and Verne Pemberton's
Blue Jacket, a 50-foot ketch from the Aeolian Yacht Club,
in 1953. One boat reported on the daily roll call that year:
'Out of wind, out of patience, out of beer.'
"The current race isn't that bad yet,
but the foregoing is mentioned because competitors are starting
to relate to those painful passages of the past. There was this
report Thursday from veteran Wendy Siegal's Cal 40, Willow
Wind:
'Early morning, just at daybreak. Supposedly, there is more wind
to the south of us, but as of now we are wallowing in 2-3 knots
of wind. The newbies on board don't believe in 20-30 knot trade
winds and, quite frankly, right now, I'm wondering if it is all
a myth. This is the second light air TransPac in a row, and this
year is much worse than last year. The wind predictions have
not been accurate at all. When we looked at the surface analysis
yesterday, we SHOULD have been in 20-knot trades.'
"Typically, Philippe Kahn's Pegasus
77 sailed only 249 miles but stretched its lead over Roy
E. Disney's Pyewacket - now directly behind - from 8 to
43 miles. Pipe Dream, a Choate/Feo 37 being coaxed along
by John Davis of Long Beach in the Aloha B class, has made only
56 and 65 miles the last two days of what looks like an 18-day
trip.
"'The 24-hour runs are enough to make
a grown man cry,' communications officer Grant Baldwin commented
from Alaska Eagle. Only eight of the 54 boats made 200
miles - a bad day by normal standards. Four are now projected
to reach the Diamond Head finish line as late as July 18, the
day of the awards dinner. No boats are projected to finish before
Monday, July 14.
"Through it all, Stan Honey, sailing
his and wife Sally's Cal 40, Illusion, from Palo Alto,
with veterans Skip Allan and Jon Andron as crew, has demonstrated
his usual TransPac navigational wizardry - heretofore beneficial
to Pyewacket - by putting this much slower boat in the
right places at the right times. With 172 miles from Wednesday
to Thursday, Illusion had a better day than most of the
boats in Division 4 and below, and now lead the next Cal 40 by
68 miles."
For more info, visit www.transpacificyc.org.
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