February 12, 2001

Photos of the Day

February 12 – Montego Bay

Here’s the Cliff Notes version of the 2001 Pineapple Cup (811
miles from Ft. Lauderdale to Montego Bay, Jamaica):

1) First-to-Finish: Jim Dolan’s beautiful Langan 78 ‘Sagamore’
crossed the finish line at 6:05 p.m. local time last Tuesday,
just as the sun was sinking. They were over a day off ‘Windward
Passage’s increasingly legendary 1971 record time of 3 days,
3 hours and 40 minutes. The celebration on ‘Sagamore’ was muted,
as ‘Pyewacket’ – which led the race from the get-go – had
dropped out 160 miles from the finish line due to owner Roy Disney’s
work commitments.

2) Honors in the five-boat IMS class went to Jim Dockery’s Farr
60 ‘Carrera’ (ex-‘Deep Powder’), which beat sistership ‘Rima’
by about 45 minutes. Dockery stacked the deck in his favor before
the start, lining up an all-star crew which included navigator
Ed Adams, Ken Read, Chris Larson, Jerry Kirby, Greg Gendell,
Dan Neri and other rockstars.

3) Just as ‘Carrera’ was getting ready to celebrate overall honors
in the 17-boat fleet (calculated on PHRF time), ‘Bonkers’, Bill
Zartler’s 42-foot Texas-based J/130, came zooming across the
finish line at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday afternoon. ‘Bonkers’ had been
out of contact for several days, as they didn’t have an SSB and
were out of VHF range – and her crew had no idea that they’d
just won the race overall by 45 minutes. Among ‘Bonkers’ nine-person
crew were five Bay Area sailors – Chuck Riley, Gordy Nash,
Ruth Suzuki, Bob Musor and Ed Kriese, all of whom sail on Musor’s
local J/130 ‘Sceptre’. “Congratulations, you guys did it!”
we told them as they docked. “Did what?” they asked
blankly. A fine celebration ensued as it dawned on them that
they had won the 25th running of the Pineapple Cup.

‘Bonkers’ on the way to a win.

The winning crew included some
familiar faces.
Photos Latitude/Rob

4) Three boats DNFed, including the mighty ‘Pyewacket’, all
with arguably more interesting stories than the winners. The
new J/145 ‘Strabo’ plowed into a coral head early in the race,
lodging her bow on a “Volkswagen-sized rock” while
her depthsounder still registered 22 feet. “You could have
gone over the bow pulpit and stood on the rock without getting
your feet wet,” they told us. . . ‘Gemini’, a Polish one-tonner,
sailed the last 350 miles of the race with just one third of
a rudder. They diverted into Cuba to resupply, and limped into
Montego Bay just in time for the Friday night awards ceremony.

If any of the above whets your appetite for more, check out www.montegobayrace.com.
Stay tuned for our feature article on this small but classic
East Coast ocean race (jokingly called “the best kept secret
in sailing”) in the March
print issue.

Vendée Globe Finishers

February 12 – Atlantic Ocean

As expected, Frenchman Michel Desjoyeaux of ‘PRB’ crossed
the finish line on Saturday, one day ahead of Ellen MacArthur
of ‘Kingfisher’, to win the fourth Vendée Globe singlehanded
around the world race. Hundreds of thousands of mostly French
enthusiasts were on hand to greet Desjoyeaux, 35, who completed
the course in 93 days, three hours, knocking more than 12.5 days
– or 11% off Christophe Augain’s previous record.

Michel Desjoyeaux
Photo François Mousis
Courtesy www.quokkasailing.com

Desjoyeaux told reporters that most of his improvement over
Augain’s time had been in the Southern Ocean because Augain didn’t
have anyone hot on his heels. Desjoyeaux, on the other hand,
had Yves Parlier sailing an average of two knots faster in an
attempt to recapture the lead. Desjoyeaux decided not to try
and match Parlier’s furious pace because, “I didn’t believe
it was possible to go so fast for so long.” Shortly thereafter,
Parlier suffered a terrible wipeout at speed, causing his mast
to fall.

Magnanimous in victory, Desjoyeaux, expressed almost puzzled
admiration for Ellen MacArthur, the 24-year old Brit who dogged
him so gallantly in ‘Kingfisher’. “Ellen for me is a great
mystery. She is 10 years younger than me, and she could have
beaten me. She came so close to me in the Saint Helen anticyclone,
and she came back on me in the Doldrums and the Azores High.
She has displayed a great deal of courage and determination,
and threatened me right until the end.”

The French skipper said that 80% of his victory could be attributed
to boat preparation and a little good luck, and that he was only
20% responsible. He said that he was never afraid for himself,
only worried about breaking his mast or some system on his unusually
complex boat. Desjoyeaux has always been an innovator. He introduced
the concept of a canting keel several Mini Transats ago, and
now 80% of the Open 60s sport them. Desjoyeaux ended his press
conference expressing solidarity with the other participants,
encouraging racing enthusiasts and supporters to give an equally
warm welcome to every finisher, right up to the very last.

Ellen MacArthur after the finish.
Photo Thierry Martinez
Courtesy www.kingfisherchallenges.com

MacArthur, who finished on Sunday a little more than a day
after Desjoyeaux, became both the fastest woman to solo around
the world – beating Catherine Chabaud’s record by about 40 days
– and the youngest person to complete a Vendée. Last year
she took top honors in the Europe 1 New Man Star with ‘Kingfisher’,
and prior to that won the Open 50 class in the Route du Rhum.
Nobody considers her triumphant second place finish a fluke.
England’s newest hero, MacArthur received a 15 minute phone call
from British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who invited her to visit
him. “Yep, see you later,” she told him in her unpretentious
manner that has made her such a favorite.

As did Desjoyeaux, MacArthur was quick to share credit for her
incredible performance against 23 of the top boats and skippers
in the world. “I was just the pilot,” she said, and
claimed that 95% of the credit belonged to the team who prepared
her boat and helped her get through the bad days. In reality,
most of the time it was Ellen alone against the elements and
the competitors:

“Unfortunately, I was way behind Mich coming out of the
Saint Helene high pressure system but was keen to keep my position
in the west. Coming to the Equator I spent a lot of time mending
my genniker. I spent 18 hours with it laid out on deck; I was
fairly careful with the sail as I wanted a big sail in the doldrums.
The wind instruments broke on two consecutive nights, so I had
to change the anemometer at the top of the mast twice. Sailing
with a fragile genniker now, I was pretty tired. The first anemometer
I fixed was faulty, so I had to go up the rig a second time.
That was the moment I was most scared. I was at the top of the
rig, there was this big squall, lots of rain, but I didn’t mind
that. The wind died off and the boat gybed seven times while
I was up the mast. With a boat that has a canted keel, if the
main had been on the wrong side and the wind had come back, the
boat would have fallen over on top of me. So I was completely
exhausted and sailed further to the east. I needed to sleep.
I ended up due south of Mich – well that’s life.”

MacArthur said she wants her message to be that you can achieve
just about anything you want, and that she just happened to choose
sailing. “In the face of adversity you find solutions, you
put all your time and energy into finding the solution. There
was a moment that I feared for my life, that I wasn’t sure I
could get out of what I’d got into. But I had no option but to
sort the problem.” She also says she’s far from tired of
sailing. “If the race was going to start tomorrow, you can
bet your bottom dollar that I’d be on that start line again!
It was the hardest race ever, but it’s very difficult to get
off the boat.” She already has a crewed transatlantic race
in the offing this summer.

For more details, visit www.vendeeglobe.com.

Banderas Bay Regatta

February 12 – Banderas Bay, Mexico

If your boat is in Mexico, don’t blow it by missing the Banderas
Bay Regatta on March 23-25. It’s free, and as you can see from
this photo, the sailing conditions are usually excellent.

Photo Latitude/Richard