History

The 1994 Tahiti Race may well go down in the record books as the World’s longest Match Race. While a dozen boats expressed early interest in the race, only SORCERY and KATHMANDU crossed the starting line in Los Angeles harbor at 1310 on June 24, 1994. SORCERY, a Mull 82, was skippered by Jake Wood, a veteran of five Tahiti races. KATHMANDU, a Santa Cruz 70, was skippered by Fred Kirschner, an avid ULDB-70 racer. The boats were closely matched in terms of official ratings but quite different in design, with SORCERY displacing about three times as much as KATHMANDU. Both skippers were highly motivated to beat the course record (17d.07h.57m.55s.) set by TICONDEROGA in 1964.

The 37th running of the Transpacific Yacht race was actually four races in one. Due to the large disparity of boat speeds within the fleet of 42, it was decided to stagger the start over a four day period to try to equalize the finishing dates. The results were mixed due to mother nature and the Pacific high playing a fickle hand with most entrants. Kenwood Corporation, again, sponsored the event.

Transpac ’91 had 42 yachts departing this year for the islands in the form of two separate starts on two different days. Eleven yachts started the race on June 27th in very light air and 31 yachts started the race of June 29th with a stiff westerly blowing at about 15 knots!

The reason behind the double start was to try and have all of the participants finish a little closer together in Hawaii.