Rest of Vic-Maui Fleet Closing on Hawaii

The Paul Bieker-designed Riptide 50 Strum took elapsed time honors in the 2,308-mile Vic-Maui race on Saturday. A little over twelve days after the start, Wink Vogel’s silver-hulled speedster arrived at the Lahaina YC with only the vague threat of losing corrected time honors from the rest of the chasing pack. The next finisher, Warren Hale’s C&C 44 Turicum was within striking distance, but missed by five hours, finishing yesterday at 3:10 p.m. local time.

The rest of the fleet is now in a new race — to make the finish before the time limit. To count as finished, the four remaining boats must make a deadline of 11:55 p.m. tomorrow night, and given the speeds they’re showing now, it’ll be close. The finish tally of two teams now equals the number that dropped out and arrived in the Bay Area instead. In all, three of the nine boat fleet have dropped out due to too little breeze. A look at the race’s online tracker tells the wrenching tale — the plots of  the boats’ tracks look like strings of beads instead of Lincoln Logs.

To John Guggins Olson 40 Red Heather, Kenneth Greff’s Pretorien 35 Seeker, Steven Shainin’s Stevens 47 Passepartout and Dan Mathieu’s C&C 39 Black Watch, all of whom are sticking it out, we salute you! Follow their race against the deadline at the race’s website.