Latitude‘s Tahiti bureau chief (ahem!) stayed up until the wee hours last night to help welcome Jim Morgan’s Santa Cruz 50 Fortaleza, the fourth and final finisher in the newly reconstituted Tahiti Race. Although it was three in the morning by the time the weary crew reached the downtown quay in Papeete, they were greeted with fresh flower leis, rum punch and the sweet melodies of a traditional Tahitian band.

Fortaleza corrected out to finish second overall, with Chris Welsh’s Spencer 66 Ragtime taking top honors as the overall winner. As reported earlier, Doug Baker’s Andrews 80 Magnitude 80 took line honors, crushing the old record by more than 3.5 days, with Bob Lane’s Andrews 63 Medicine Man finishing second. In fact, the first three finishers broke the old mark, set by Fred Kirschner’s SC 70 Kathmandu when the race was last run 14 years ago.

In addition to the fact that the Tahiti Race is nearly 1,400 miles longer than either the TransPac or the Pac Cup, another obvious difference is that racers must deal with the threat of little or no wind when crossing the equatorial zone (ITCZ).

But for both Ragtime and Fortaleza the notorious ITCZ was a non-issue: "The doldrums really didn’t exist for us," said Welsh when we caught up with him last night in Papeete. Both Rags and Fortaleza dove south on longitudes farther east than the frontrunners, and ended up sailing in consistently stronger winds — up to the low 30s during a few squalls.

Another essential difference between this and the Hawaii races, is that about half of the course required reaching rather than running. Chutes were set rarely, if ever, south of the equator. Look for a complete report in the upcoming issue of Latitude 38 due to hit the stands on August 1.

The Paul Bieker-designed Riptide 50 Strum took elapsed time honors in the 2,308-mile Vic-Maui race on Saturday. A little over twelve days after the start, Wink Vogel’s silver-hulled speedster arrived at the Lahaina YC with only the vague threat of losing corrected time honors from the rest of the chasing pack. The next finisher, Warren Hale’s C&C 44 Turicum was within striking distance, but missed by five hours, finishing yesterday at 3:10 p.m. local time.

The rest of the fleet is now in a new race — to make the finish before the time limit. To count as finished, the four remaining boats must make a deadline of 11:55 p.m. tomorrow night, and given the speeds they’re showing now, it’ll be close. The finish tally of two teams now equals the number that dropped out and arrived in the Bay Area instead. In all, three of the nine boat fleet have dropped out due to too little breeze. A look at the race’s online tracker tells the wrenching tale — the plots of  the boats’ tracks look like strings of beads instead of Lincoln Logs.

To John Guggins Olson 40 Red Heather, Kenneth Greff’s Pretorien 35 Seeker, Steven Shainin’s Stevens 47 Passepartout and Dan Mathieu’s C&C 39 Black Watch, all of whom are sticking it out, we salute you! Follow their race against the deadline at the race’s website.