Can You Help Identify This Mystery Sailing Art?
How good are you at identifying sailboats from photos? Reader Chris Juhasz sent us a mystery to solve with the photo below, saying, “I’ve had this photo, artwork since around 1975ish. Can anyone help me learn more about it? It is signed Gilpin.” Chris added, “I grew up in SoCal sailing, casual racing, if there is such a thing around Long Beach and San Pedro. I sold my boat, a Newport 30, over ten years ago when I moved to Idaho. I was pleased to be included in Latitude 38 about 15 years ago when I was lucky enough to spend time sailing around the Caribbean with the late Mike Harker on Wanderlust.”
Can any of our readers help him out? Those are classic sails when you look at the cut of the spinnaker and narrow-paneled main.
Does anyone know the boat, the year, the location? The artist?
Add your input to the comments below.
Ken Demeuse Blackfin finishing T-Pac?
Yes! Looks like Koko head and Olu Mana mountains on Oahu East side!
Transpac in ‘ancient’ times?
Looks like one of the early maxi ketches finishing a TransPac off Diamond Head. ? Ondine, ? Windward Passage.
A much higher resolution file would help. Is it a photo or illustration artwork ? When was it done ?
Blackfin coming down through the Molokai Channel?
Stormvogel! 1970’s
Windward Passage
The boat is at or near the location of the Diamond Head buoy off Oahu. The background hills are Koko Head and Koko Crater at the east end of Oahu. Transpac early ’60’s?
Kiahloa at Diamond Head finish for Transpac.
WINDWARD PASSAGE (when she was ketch rigged and had a bow sprit) off Diamond Head, setting new elapsed time record and winning the Barn Door Trophy in Los Angeles to Honolulu Transpac, July 13, 1971, in the time of 9 days, 9 hours, 6 minutes. PASSAGE also won the race overall. The artist is William C. Gibson (1917-1988) of Newport Beach, CA. Gibson worked primarily in charcoal and is most known for his portraits of Hollywood stars.
Correction (typo): the artist is William C. Gilpin (1917-1988), NOT Gibson.
The photo that this charcoal rendering was based on was taken by FOTOBOAT, Santa Barbara and was the cover shot for the 1973 Transpac program. https://transpacyc.com/assets/documents/programs/1973_Transpac_Program.pdf
Boy – page 6 of that Race Program reads like a who’s who of California yachting. I have all these programs from 75-84 before real life took over and sailing to Hawaii became much harder to fit into the home/work schedule.
‘Passage is my guess. Here’s a comparo pic showing the ‘jungle gym’ pulpit: https://rbsailing.blogspot.com/2022/12/
Credit where credit is due. William Gilpin’s charcoal rendering of WINDWARD PASSAGE winning the Barn Door in ’71 is from a photo by Dick Cleveland of Santa Barbara, whose business “Fotoboat” specialized in Transpac finish photos. The reason the mainsail panels are narrow is we’d just taken delivery of a Hood main, whose sail cloth was woven on looms intended to weave cloth for pillow cases. If you look closely at the ’73 Transpac Handbook photo, I’m the kid in red shorts up by the mast.
Thank you Tom Patterson. Great story of the build in Wooden Boat Magazine, Issue #280 May/June 2021.
Leave it to Tom Patterson and Skip Allan to know without question- especially since Skip was on the boat for the race !
Chris Juhasz wrote to thank Latitude 38 readers, “Thank you again. A near life-long mystery is solved. Windward Passage will remain hanging proudly in my office in Idaho.”