Ryan Finn’s Solo Route d’Or
In the June issue of Latitude 38, we shared the story of Ryan Finn’s solo voyage from New York to San Francisco around Cape Horn, aboard his 36-ft proa Jzerro. Our racing editor, Christine Weaver, chatted with Ryan after he had finished his trip and returned to New Orleans.
On Thursday, April 21, at 6:04 p.m., Ryan Finn, sailing solo aboard his 36-ft proa Jzerro, passed under the Golden Gate Bridge to finish an amazing adventure. Ryan sailed singlehanded from New York to San Francisco around Cape Horn on the 13,225-mile course called the “Route d’Or,” made famous by Gold Rush-era clipper ships.
We interviewed Ryan after he’d returned home to New Orleans, having left his worthy steed, looking remarkably fresh, on an end-tie at Richmond Yacht Club.
“The idea to do the trip came before the boat,” Ryan told us. “I wanted to beat the solo record, which was set in 1990 on a 60-ft trimaran. I could have done it if I didn’t have to stop. The overall trip length was 93 days. I only sailed for 74 of those days. So I would have been ahead of that bigger boat.
“I was thinking about what records were available to an American that were cheap. The French have insurance companies building them boats. I don’t know how much a foiling trimaran costs, but that’s a lot more than Jzerro, than my campaign. There’s no way I would be able to do anything like that. What could I do? It would have to be a multihull, but what multihull can take that kind of a beating? That’s how I got to the proa. No proa’s ever done this route.”
Ryan’s choice of boat shocked people who aren’t familiar with the attributes of proas. “It’s very long for its weight, so its speed is good. It’s lightweight so it doesn’t require huge sails.” Jzerro is 36 feet long; her mast is 36 feet tall, and she weighs 3,200 pounds. “For a 36-ft monohull that’s unheard of. I’ve raced against F-31 trimarans that had 60-ft masts.”
Ryan picked the boat up in Washington state from her designer, Russell Brown, who built her in 1994. Russell and Ryan sailed her to San Francisco, then Ryan singlehanded from there to New Orleans through the Panama Canal. “That was my test. I thought if I didn’t feel comfortable after that then I’d put the boat up for sale.”
The first attempt, in January 2021, was short-lived. “I didn’t have a watermaker, and I brought all the water on the boat, which made it a lot heavier. That may have been part of the problem. When I entered the Gulf Stream, I was going fast, 15-19 knots. I came down really hard on a wave, and I heard what sounded like a shotgun blast. The leeward side of Jzerro has a flotation pod on it so you can really tip the boat over pretty far until it flips. I slammed that into a wave that blew a 1-ft by 1-ft panel, and a ton of water came in. It was above the waterline, so I pumped it all out and did what I could as far as repairing it, which was a hack job.”
Continue reading at Latitude38.com.