Drag Race to the Solo TransPac Finish

Excitement was building last night, as two finishers in the Singlehanded TransPac sailed within 100 miles of Hanalei Bay. In an actual and virtual drag race to the finish were the youngest skipper in the 23-boat fleet, Jirí Šenkyrík, age 27, sailing a vintage design, his 1981 Olson 30 Kato, vs. a new design, the 2015 J/88 Ventus, sailed by Chris Cartwright, who’s celebrating his 50 years on the planet by racing solo from San Francisco Bay to Kauai. Both boats are based in the Bay Area.

 At 8:30 p.m. local time, with Kato about 80 miles away and Ventus about 20 miles back, a carload of race committee volunteers drove up the cliff to Princeville, which overlooks the easternmost point of Hanalei Bay, to try to make contact via VHF and a Yagi antenna, but no dice.

As Hanalei’s feral roosters were crowing to greet the dawn this morning, Kato had 18 miles to go. Ventus was another 10 miles back. Also expected to finish today (possibly in early to mid-afternoon local time) is Robert Macdonald’s Olson 29 Nina. David Herrigel’s Wilderness 30 Domino, David Garman’s Santa Cruz 27 Giant Slayer and Vance Sprock’s Cal 40 Seazed Asset are all predicted to arrive on Saturday, roughly in that order — but the deck could certainly get shuffled a bit between now and then. Jibeset’s Ray Irvine has created an interesting spreadsheet of estimated finish times (note that times are in PDT, not HST) based on the tracker data. Check it out here. But keep in mind it’s just for fun — the leaderboard is an ephemeral thing, as each boat’s tracker updates at different times.