July 14, 2003

Photos of the Day: Lipton Cup

July 14 – San Francisco Bay

PICYA’s Lipton/Knight/Little Lipton Cups
on Saturday set the scene for some hair-raising sailing in what
are, after all, typical July conditions on the Bay. Rob Moore
fired off some shots dripping with adrenalin before winging his
way to Hawaii to cover the finish of the TransPac (see next item).
We’ll have full coverage, including results, in the August issue
of Latitude 38.

Barn Door but No Record

July 14 – Honolulu, HI

Philippe Kahn’s R/P 77 Pegasus crossed
the finish line around 2:30 this morning HST to win the Barn
Door Trophy for the second straight time in the TransPac. Because
of light air in the middle of the race, Pegasus missed
the elapsed time record of 7 days 11 hours 41 minutes 27 seconds
(set by Roy E. Disney in 1999) by just a few hours. Kahn really
wanted the record. He had a top-flight crew and practiced 24
days for the eight-day race. Equally disappointed were crew Mark
Rudiger and Jeff Madrigali. The two have been on elapsed-time
winning boats five times yet have still not broken the record.
Rudiger, one of the world’s best navigators, said they sailed
an almost perfect race.

Philippe Kahn at the helm of Pegasus 77. Other crew members
are (from left) Adam Beashel, Morgan Larson, 13-year-old Samuel (Shark)
Kahn and Sean (Doogie) Couvreux.
Photo Courtesy Pegasus 77

Roy E. Disney’s R/P 75 Pyewacket
finished five hours after Pegasus. She had taken a more
northerly course and sailed into lighter air.

This is the 14th time that Patty Disney has greeted husband Roy
E. Disney (on side of boat) and son Roy Pat (at mast) along TransPac
Row.

Corrected time honors for fleet are still
up in the air. Top contenders include Bill Turpin’s TP-52 Alta
Vita and Karl Kwok’s TP-52 Beau Jeste. They are expected
to finish 24 hours after Pegasus, sometime tonight. Also
within striking distance is Stan and Sally Honey’s Cal 40 Illusion,
which is expected about noon Hawaiian time today.

Lady Bleu II, taking full advantage of a head start for
the Aloha
class, breezes past Diamond Head in 30 knots of wind as the first
boat to finish.

Six of the Aloha cruising class entries
finished before Pegasus, having started early. The first
boat to finish was Roger Kuske’s Dynamique 62 Lady Bleu II.
All of the early finishers had light air crossings until the
last 25 miles in the Molokai Channel, where four tore chutes.

For more info, visit www.transpacificyc.org.

Midnight Moonlight Maritime Marathon

July 14 – Belvedere

By contrast to Saturday’s daytime racing
(see top item), the wind fizzled for Saturday night’s PHRF fun
run up to Vallejo and back. Profligate reports that they
had crazy, confused wind from the Raccoon Strait start to the
Brothers Islands north of the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, followed
by a nice run to Vallejo, after which the wind shut down for
the beat back to the San Francisco YC. None of the other multihulls
finished either, but nine monohulls did make it back, with the
Wyliecat 30 Silkye correcting out first, followed by the
Farr 40s Shadow and Blue Chip. Twenty-one boats
turned out to enjoy the fabulous moon.

Everest Horizontal Recovered

July 14 – St. Georges, Bermuda

Tim Kent, skipper of the Open 50 which
lost her bulb keel and capsized last month in the second leg
of the Bermuda 1-2, tells of Everest Horizontal’s recovery:

“After two unsuccessful attempts to
locate Everest Horizontal, we left St. Georges on the
38-foot charter fishing boat Tenacious at 8:00 pm on July
1, heading to the last position reported of the upturned hull
of Everest. On board was what can only be described as
a Dream Team for the audacious attempt to recover a 50-ft boat
in the middle of the ocean with a 38-ft fishing boat. On board
were Sloan Wakefield, the skipper of Tenacious, Steve
Hollis and Paul LaVigne of Ocean Sails, our diver David Calhoun,
Ton Wadson and Godfrey Simpson and myself.

“After an uncomfortable overnight
passage to the search area, we began looking for the boat at
dawn. As noon, then 1:00 pm crept by, the mood on board became
grim…the boat had to be back at the dock by Thursday morning
[July 3] and we were running out of time. Then at 2:00 pm, Sloan
spotted something orange…the keel! Sloan spotted this bare-eyed,
something that the three folks looking through binoculars could
not see.

“We hustled to the site to find EH
almost completely awash; she was floating stern-up, awash all
the back to her keel – FULL of water. David donned his dive gear
and he and I took a dinghy to the boat to check the condition
of the rig. As David was getting ready to dive, I put on a mask
and looked below…at carnage. The mast was broken into three
pieces above the deck, the foredeck hatch had opened and the
spinnaker and Code Zero had washed out and were tangled in the
rig. Clearly we were going to have to cut everything away.

“I went back to the boat and got Steve,
and the two of us, with David’s help under the boat, rigged a
line around the hull to the top of the keel and tied it down.
We all returned to the Tenacious and attempted to pull
the boat upright, but no dice…the angle was all wrong on the
keel. Steve and I returned to the boat and rigged a new line,
again with David’s help. This time, as Sloan gave Tenacious
the gas, Everest rolled upright!

“Steve, Tom and I packed the gas pump
that Tom had brought along and returned to Everest. With
the pump at full tilt, the boat slowly started to rise in the
water, even more so as the three of us cut lines and popped pins
to release the rig.

“At 8:00 pm, six hours after we found
her, Everest Horizontal was under tow to Ordinance Island
in St. Georges.

“This brief account can not begin
to tell the story of this remarkable effort. Everest is
now clean and dry, with her diesel engine running and ready to
propel her home. Thanks to all of the wonderful people who made
this possible, particularly Steve and Suzanne Hollis of Ocean
Sails here in Bermuda. I wandered into their shop dispirited
and out of options and they made this incredible mission possible.”

Tim promises photos, including dive shots,
on his Web site soon: www.everesthorizontal.com.

West Point Marina Project Goes Before
the BCDC

July 14 – Redwood City

Bob Wilson writes, “I am sending you
some information regarding the progress towards building a new
marina in the South Bay in the hopes that you will help publicize
an important event that is happening at the BCDC next week on
July 17. The project is the West Point Marina to be located on
West Point Slough just off Redwood Creek in Redwood City, adjacent
to the new South Port office development and near the Port of
Redwood City loading facilities. The West Point Marina project
is at a critical point. All agencies except the BCDC have already
approved it. To move ahead the project needs BCDC approval, and
there is a hearing at 1:00 pm on Thursday, July 17, in Oakland
to consider this project for approval. It will be held at the
MetroCenter Auditorium at 101 Eighth Street in Oakland.

“Building new marinas is a rare occurrence
due to the lengthy and expensive approval process. We boaters
have so few destination marina options already and those in the
South Bay are diminishing all the time. The West Point Marina
project was conceived by Mark Sanders and has been shepherded
through the approval process by him for more than 15 years! It
is being located in an area that was an environmental time bomb
until Mark had it cleaned up as part of an arrangement with the
old Leslie Salt Company. As such it is a rare project on the
water’s edge that has been enthusiastically supported by the
community, local governments and environmental groups.
 
“Readers can lend a hand by coming out to the meeting in
force to express their support. You may recall we lost the Peninsula
Marina in Redwood City to developers two years ago. Due to lack
of dredging we lost the entire Palo Alto marina and effectively
the Alviso marina as well. This is a rare chance for Bay Area
boaters to participate directly in the process of determining
the direction of development of Bay Area boating resources by
attending the BCDC meeting and making a one or two-minute statement
.”

YOTREPS

July 14 – The Pacific Ocean and Cyberspace

Who is out making passages in the Pacific
and what kind of weather are they having? The YOTREPS daily yacht
tracking page has moved to www.bitwrangler.com/psn.

Weather Updates

July 14 – Pacific
Ocean

San Francisco Bay Weather

Check out this guide to San Francisco Bay
Navigational Aids: http://sfports.wr.usgs.gov/sfports.html.

To see what the winds are like on the Bay
and just outside the Gate right now, check out http://sfports.wr.usgs.gov/wind.

The National Weather Service site for San
Francisco Bay is at www.wrh.noaa.gov/Monterey.

California Coast Weather

Looking for current as well as recent wind
and sea readings from 17 buoys and stations between Pt. Arena
and the Mexican border? Here’s the place – which has further
links to weather buoys and stations all over the U.S.: www.ndbc.noaa.gov/Maps/Southwest.shtml.

Pacific Winds and Pressure

The University of Hawaii Dept. of Meteorology
page posts a daily map of the NE Pacific Ocean barometric
pressure and winds.

Pacific Sea State

Check out the Pacific Ocean sea states
at: http://www.mpc.ncep.noaa.gov/RSSA/PacRegSSA.html.

For views of sea states anywhere in the world,
see http://www.oceanweather.com/data.