Tahiti Race Start Socked In

Instead of a sunny, glorious day befitting the momentousness of the occasion, the four starters in the 13th Tahiti Race were treated to fog and lots of it off Pt. Fermin on Sunday. After a 14-year hiatus, the 3,571-mile slide across the equator to the South Pacific was resurrected this year. Due to their widely varying speed potential, all four boats — Doug Baker’s Andrews 80 Magnitude 80, Bob Lane’s Andrews 63 Medicine Man, Chris Welsh’s classic Spencer 65 Ragtime, and Jim Morgan’s Santa Cruz 50 Fortaleza — will likely not be racing each other as much as they’ll be racing the course record of 14 days, 21 hours set by the late Fred Kirschner’s SC 70 Kathmandu in the last running of the race in 1994.

For many of the sailors, this will be their first equatorial crossing, and the ceremonial visit from King Neptune is expected to provide an unwelcome reward for what’s looking like a doldrums crossing of nearly 300 miles. The odds-on favorite for line honors is Magnitude 80 followed by Medicine Man and Ragtime. All are projected to break the record, and even Fortaleza, if conditions improve somewhat, could do likewise.