The 1995 Transpac, as in the past, was sponsored by Kenwood Corporation. Hawaiian Airlines was the official airline. It was a traditional race to Honolulu with four innovative changes to respond to the yachting world. These included: deriving a Transpac rating system from IMS data for all entrants; setting the upper limit equal to the new ILC-70 configuration; inviting certain monohull and multihull vessels as “Guests”; starting a double handed class; and allowing Category B commercially sponsored entrants. The resulting mix included the ILC-70 of Larry Ellison, SAYONARA; a Whitbread 60, Neil Barth’s AMERICA’S ChALLENGE; two “Turbo-sleds”; and two “multihulls” in the fleet of 38. Twenty-one yachts exceeded 60 feet in length.
The starts were again staggered over 6 days, including the multihulls. Winds were moderate along the coast, but there was a large area of 0-5 knot winds 300 miles out. Early starters hit this wall, and ended up recording very slow going (MOUNTAIN OYSTER 43 km, ANTARA 51 km). The Pacific high seemed nearly fixed, due north of Hawaii. The effect was to preserve MERLIN’s elapsed time record, dictate light air sailing for most entrants, and to create rationing of water and supplies for some. SOlUTION, a SC-40, elected to withdraw after 8 days.
Once past the hole, the trades filled and grew to 20 knots, causing HATSU to lose her rig and withdraw. The race coverage (now on internet) quickly focused on the first-to-finish battle with the Turbo-sleds of Hal Ward, CHEVAL, and Roy Disney, PYEWACKET, jousting with SAYONARA, and guest WINDQUEST of the DeVos family. Over eight days of close racing CHEVAL built a 70 mile lead, and her 24 hour run of 322 miles just missed BLONDIE’s 1987 record of 323 miles. On the last jibe, 35 miles from the finish, a backstay broke and the mast followed into the sea. Avoiding the coast of Molokai (3/4 of a mile) the crew built a jury rig within 45 minutes and sailed the remaining distance at over 8 knots to finish in 9 days, 1 hour, 32 minutes to beat WINDQUEST by 1 hour, 22 minutes. MERLIN, in her 10th race, under charter to Dan Sinclair of Vancouver, B.C., became the first “International” yacht to correct out First Overall.
Nine standard 70' sleds had an extremely close covering contest. The first four, MIRAGE, EVOlUTION, ORIENT EXPRESS and MONGOOSE, finished within 53 minutes of each other. MIRAGE took the win.
Veteran JUMPIN’ JACK FLASH took Division 3 over a fleet of ten 50' entries, while DADDABOAT took First in the reduced Division 4. AIR STRIPPER, a J-35, took First in Division 5 in 14 days, 6 hours, 46 minutes over ANTARA, a Cal-40, Ms.“Tail-end Charlie”.
Mike Howard was awarded the Don Vaughn Trophy, and Mark Rudiger repeated as the Best Navigator. Crews included numerous internationally known sailors such as Paul Cayard, John Kolius, Ross MacDonald, Geoff Stagg, John Bertrand, Dave Scully, and Kimo Worthington.
Steve Fossett’s LAKOTA, a 60' Trimaran, set a new record of 6 days, 16 hours, 7 minutes for invited guest multihulls, beating Bob Hanel’s DOUBLE BULLET and showing the potential for future races.
- Craig Brown, Historian