Pyewacket 70 Finishes Pacific Cup Race

Roy Pat Disney’s turbo Volvo 70 Pyewacket 70 has completed the Pacific Cup, first to finish, much as expected. But it was not a record-setting year; Manouch Moshayedi’s Rio100 retains the record for fastest passage. Pyewacket finished at 11:05:59 HST yesterday, for an elapsed time of 6 days, 0 hours, 30 minutes and 59 seconds. They currently hold first place overall on corrected time as well. Check out the drone video of their arrival:

Pyewacket’s 18-ft draft (wow, not a typo!) will keep them out of Kaneohe. “Though we would love to come and join the party at KYC, our draft of 18-ft precludes us from enjoying the party there, so we will be headed immediately to Honolulu as planned and previously arranged.”

“We averaged over 21.5 knots for over 5 hours straight,” Pyewacket reported on Thursday morning. “Such an amazing boat. Great crew, and a bit of a sad moment to think this could be the boat’s final approach to a Hawaiian Island finish line as Pyewacket70.” Hmmm, what are they saying…?

Division Leaders

Other division leaders include the Cal 40 Azure, which sailed a more northerly course than the bulk of the fleet; the J/111 Raku; the Express 37 Spindrift V; the J/105 Free Bowl of Soup; the J/125 Hamachi; the doublehanded Dogpatch 26 Moonshine; and the doublehanded Alerion 38 Surprise! Solis, a 46-ft Hans Christian, sailing alone in the Cruising Division, is bringing up the rear.

The next boat expected to arrive is Alan Lubner’s Zvi. The R/P 55 is 300 miles out as of this writing and a bit north of the rhumbline. The race committee expects the “the floodgates [to] open over the weekend.”

Media man Ronnie Simpson reported on Wednesday that, “Kolea DH1 remains one of the most entertaining races on course due to the big north/south split that has existed since day one. Bill and Melinda Erkelens on the Moore 24 Foamy had this writer firmly in their camp and buying into their southerly strategy early. But as the wind has softened for many southerly boats, they appear to have faded. Marc Andrea Klimaschewski and David Rogers on the Dogpatch 26 Moonshine continue to move well up north of rhumbline, with Amanda and Brian Turner on the Beneteau First 10R CruzSea Baby off their hip and just behind.”

Weather Concerns

Weather Routing Inc. opined that “Hurricane Darby is not a threat to the race and is expected to pass south of Hawaii in a much weakened form during the 16/17th timeframe. It will, however, kick up some southeasterly swell that will propagate into the grids in the next several days. Tropical Low #7 likewise is not a threat and is expected to remain farther east.”

See more at https://pacificcup.org and www.facebook.com/PacCup. We’ll feature the Pacific Cup in the August issue of Latitude 38.

Checking in on the Vic-Maui

The Pacific Cup has been getting better breeze than the Vic-Maui Race. Charlotte Gann reported yesterday:

“There’s an amendment to 6.3 of the Sailing Instructions — the time limit is now extended to 1000 HST on Tuesday, July 26. Unfortunately, the awards banquet is fixed and will proceed on July 23 as planned.” Phoenix reported that they’re completing their “51st Driftsure.”

“Wind — there isn’t much; requests for wind have come in from Red Sheilla (send wind), Xiomara (becalmed, a valiant crew dove to remove rope from the rudder), Flow (NO WIND!), Annie M (flat calm, not looking good). Much of the fleet is moving toward the trade winds soon.

“Outbreak found a monster glass ball float! These are getting rarer, so a great coup for the boat.

“The YB Tracker has created a new page which shows the Vic-Maui and Pac Cup races on the same page: http://yb.tl/Pac-Vic22 in addition to the page for the Vic-Maui Race: www.vicmaui.org/tracker.