HistoryFifty-six monohulls and two multihulls hailing from six countries around the Pacific and two from Europe entered the 47th biennial edition of the Transpacific Yacht Club’s race from Los Angeles to Honolulu, with all but two completing the 2225-mile course. The race was characterized primarily by light and irregular wind conditions for the fastest boats, so no course records were broken this year. However, steadier weather for the smaller and slower entries gave them an advantage to claim trophies awarded for overall results in corrected time.
The slowest 14 entries in Divisions 7 and 8 set off west in perfect seabreeze conditions on Monday, July 8th, crossing the starting line set off Point Fermin at 1300 local time, with the first mark of the course, Catalina Island’s West End, within easy reach before nightfall. This group would enjoy great weather for their trip, and yield the best overall results in the race.
The second wave of 21 entries in Divisions 4, 5 and 6 started three days later on Thursday, July 11th under quite different conditions: rainy, overcast skies and a light and fluky southerly breeze had teams not only starting the race on port tack, but gybing downwind at times to get to the West End, a highly unusual scenario for this race. These light conditions plagued this group for another few days, allowing them little progress towards hawaii, while the lead group were enjoying steady northerlies and extending themselves hundreds of miles ahead of this second group.
The last and largest wave of the fastest 21 monohulls and two multihulls in the race started two days later on Saturday, July 13th, under sunny skies and a light westerly seabreeze that was strong enough to have the fleet around the West End by nightfall, but not much further. Most of the entries in these divisions would sag far off to the south – and thus sail many extra miles – in search of favorable breeze, so there was never any serious threat to the existing course records, despite some very strong contenders.
Among these was Australia’s legendary offshore veteran Syd Fischer and his team on the canting-keeled Elliot 100 RAGAMUFFIN 100. Italian Giovanni Soldini’s MASERATI could have also been a threat, had there been more wind to power up the Volvo 70 to her full potential.
Even the multihull record remained safe, in part due to the light weather, but also due to a tremendous amount of floating debris remaining in the north Pacific left over from the 2011 Fukushima earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Besides numerous debris reports among many entries, the boat most affected was John Sangmeister’s trimaran LENDING TREE. In two separate impact incidents, damage sustained to the boards on the modified ORMA 73 helped deprive LENDING TREE team the 2 hours 34 minutes they needed to break the fully-crewed multihull race record. Nonetheless, a finish time of 5 days 11 hours 52 min 33 sec was still impressive given the non-ideal weather, and illustrates the tremendous speed potential of these new-generation offshore greyhounds. Despite the foil damage, her time was still 21.5 hours faster than RAGAMUFFIN, the fastest monohull on the course and winner of the Merlin Trophy, and another day faster than Barn Door Trophy winner WIZARD, David and Peter Askew’s R/P 74.
The divisions that enjoyed the most competitive racing were those tightly-grouped in size and style: the seven Flying 52’s among the nine entries of Division 2 and the now-classic ULDB 70’s in Division 3. Sagging well south of the rhumb line in search of breeze, Isao Mita’s mixed Japanese and Kiwi team on his TP 52 BEECOM led the pack most of the race and were first to Diamond Head to claim a first place in HPR scoring. But only an hour and a half later Thomas Akin’s R/P 52 MEANIE crossed the finish line to win the division in ORR scoring by only 4 min 32 sec in corrected time – a pretty close margin after 8.2 days of racing!
The ULDB class of five entries in Division 3 was also tight, producing racing reminiscent of when this class was in its heyday in the 1980’s and ‘90’s. With an experienced team who had dozens of past Transpac races to their credit, Roy Pat Disney’s Andrews 70 PYEWACKET defeated Per Peterson’s runner-up Andrews 68 ALCHEMY by only 32 min in corrected time after over 8.6 days of racing.
Yet even closer in corrected time finishes and perhaps ironic given their slow, scattered start, Chip Megeath’s R/P 45 CRIMINAL MISCHEIF won among a mix of 42-46 foot fast boat types in Division 4 by a corrected time margin of only 3 min 47 sec over the runnerup, Bob Pethick’s Rogers 46 BRETWALDA3.
In contrast, Gordon Leon’s Farr 40 FOIL crushed their five Division 5 rivals by over 3 hours in corrected time, and Jack Taylor’s Santa Cruz 50 HORIZON did even more to their eight SC 50 and SC 52 competitors in Division 6, winning by some 5 hour 26 min in corrected time.
An example of trans-oceanic match racing was that between two Japanese rival teams in Division 7, Yuichi Takahashi’s First 40 TEN QUARTER and Hiroshi Kitada’s X-41 KIHO. The two were absolutely stuck to each other, never more than a few miles apart throughout the race, including being only 11 min apart at the finish line. But TEN QUARTER'S more favorable rating pushed her ahead by 3 hours 36 min in corrected time to win the six-boat class.
The most dramatic story of this race was that of the Division 8 and overall race winner: Matt Brooks’s classic 1929-built wooden S&S 52-foot yawl DORADE. Restored to racing condition, and with a long build up of training and optimization for this race, Brooks and team also benefited from the favorable weather enjoyed by Division 8 competitors to sail less distance to Hawaii, allowing her to repeat her win earned in 1936 with designer Olin Stephens on board.