Pacific Cup Finishers Roaring Into Hawaii

It’s been an interesting year for the Pacific Cup, although they all are in one way or another. A wide patch of light air across the course added a day or so to most boats’ passage times. Pacific Cup applied the Forecast Time Correction Factor to the ORR boats, which anticipated that weather somewhat, but still was “something new” for the racers to learn.

The classic sled Ragtime, Tina Roberts’ Spencer 65, has added a Pac Cup division win to her international cabinet of trophies, and right now stands to take the overall Pacific Cup (ORR) prize as well. Her corrected time is 16 hours ahead of Roy Disney’s Andrews 68 Pyewacket and four more in front of Zeus, Michael Firmin’s iridescent green racer with foils sticking out the sides of its hull.

In the rest of the division, only a few hours separated Chip Merlin’s Bill Lee 70 Merlin, Vitesse, and the newly-launched GEM, a Wylie 80 built for David Raney in the Pacific Northwest. We expect all these boats back for a rematch and expect great things of GEM as she gets her program dialed in. Flying the flag of Hong Kong, the 80-ft Apsaras is due to finish sometime today.

Recidivist was looking good as she arrived third in the Gosling’s Rum division.The 2026 edition of the race features three PHRF divisions and five ORR divisions, including one of each doublehanded. The overall Pacific Cup trophy will be awarded twice, once for each rating system. According to an unnamed source, “We just couldn’t find a system to harmonize them that was both fair and satisfying.” So, two winners.

Right now, it looks as if the PHRF Overall Pac Cup winner will be VIVA, Don Jesberg’s Cal 40, also topping the PHRF 2 division. Only boats with “certified” (i.e., measured) PHRF ratings are eligible for the top prize. VIVA is followed by True Love, then fellow Cal 40s Duende and Green Buffalo, which is skippered by Pac Cup addict and RYC commodore Jim Quanci.

In the doublehanded world, a standout performance was shown by Rahan, a Beneteau First 36 heavily tuned for ocean racing and skippered by Charles “Charly” Devanneaux. With an early Tuesday start and a comparatively quick passage through the light stuff, Rahan sprinted out ahead of the pack, finishing first of all the boats with a sizable gap to the next. Charly will take home first in division and second overall ORR.

There were only three doublehanded PHRF boats, all scheduled for a Monday finish and correcting to a set-in-stone order of SURF, Akumu and Bazinga.

One benefit of a comparatively light-air race is somewhat less damage. “We got a few reports of broken vangs and the like, but apart from Shake and Bake, nothing much,” communications chair Michael Moradzadeh, reports.

The most notable reported repair: Shake and Bake, a Farr X2 sailed by Jack Peurach and Brett Perry, lost one of her twin rudders to an underwater collision, and then the second failed. The pair crawled along under drogue steering while they worked out a solution and counted up their food and water supplies. After some hours of work, they managed to get two rudders cobbled together out of supplies on hand and carried on with reduced sail to meet the next challenges.

We will probably learn of other damage once the fleet is in. There can be a tendency to conceal these issues, particularly among the professionally sailed boats, so as not to show weakness to the competition.

With 33 (at this writing) boats finished, Pac Cup is counting down to its 1000th finisher since the start of the race in 1980. Before the start of this race, 966 boats had crossed the finish line. The next boat to finish today will be the 1000th. “A thousand finishes is well over two million miles sailed. We’ll celebrate that with a prize to the 1000th finisher,” says PCYC commodore Bob Hinden.

For many racers, the attraction is not the chance at a pickle dish (or a nice Weems & Plath clock or barometer) but the voyage among the whales, dolphins, bioluminescence and nighttime stars that will take your breath away. The small stories of getting smacked by a flying fish or that amazing train of surfed waves that seemed to go on forever. And finally, at the end, the friendship and stories at Kaneohe Yacht Club punctuated by amazing parties staged by the staff and volunteers. And, always, the plan for the next race in 2028.

You can see the current race standings here.