Skip to content

Transpac Taking Shape

An aerial view of Saturday’s start off San Pedro.

© Sharon Green / Ultimate Sailing

A week into this 48th edition of Transpac, the story lines continue to grow weirder and more spectacular. Some of the coolest boat porn to ever assemble on the West Coast is ripping to Hawaii in a split-fleet navigators’ duel, and at the front of the fleet a 37-footer is threatening to claim line honors. VMG-running in the tradewinds, Harry Zanville’s Santa Cruz 37 Celerity is beginning to stake her claim, consistently putting a knot of boat speed or more on her fleet to take the lead boat-for-boat of Monday’s first fleet of starters while moving up the rankings. Just behind her and leading Division 7 and ORR Overall remains Paul Stemler’s J/44 Patriot, which is sailing an incredible race.

Eight hundred miles behind Celerity and Patriot’s thrilling line-honors duel, the 100-ft canting-keel super-maxi Wild Oats XI, which started on Saturday, has passed the fleet that started two days earlier on Thursday and is burning down the race course. Behind the Aussie icon, Ragamuffin 100 and Rio100 are far to the north and may later benefit from their more northerly position by sailing around a hole and encountering light air for a shorter amount of time than Wild Oats. The bulk of Division 2 and 3 are farther south, sailing along the rhumbline in this decidedly atypical year where two dissipating lows have created a smorgasbord of pressure in what is normally the express lane to Hawaii.

Three Gunboat catamarans were among Saturday’s starters.

© 2015 Doug Gifford / Ultimate Sailing

After leaving in champagne conditions on Thursday, the 18 boats in Divisions 4, 5 and 6 have ended up as the clear losers in the weather lottery. The fleet was becalmed for much of the weekend and is still sailing slowly in the fluky and highly variable conditions, which are sure to drive any navigator crazy. Greg Slyngstad’s J/125 Hamachi leads Division 4, while Bill Durant and Jeff Shew’s SC52 Relentless leads Division 5.

Much of the fleet should encounter light air at some point over the next two days before trades build over most of the course throughout the week. This is just starting to get good! Follow the tracker here and website here, and stay tuned to ‘Lectronic for more updates.

A look at the Transpac tracker this morning shows the newly-crowned course record-setter Lending Club 2 trimaran already snug in Honolulu.

© Transpacific Yacht Club

Leave a Comment