TransPac A-Boat Start

[Kim Whitmyre]

I was invited to go out and watch the start of the race for the big boats this last Sunday. The hospitality of the crew of the Gypsy, a Columbia 52, was most appreciated!

Here's Rosebud pre-start:



Pyewacket raising the main:



Up he goes:



Pyewacket has a rather high stick!



Pegasus, to be double-handed this trip:



Morning Light, sponsored by Disney. The old Playstation, sans rig, turned into a motorboat named Cheyenne, will track ML to film the effort.



MedicineMan:



Magnitude 80, a local boat:



It's OK:



Hugo Boss, from England:



This L.A. fireboat ran the length of the starting line in full spray, and then the gun went off:



They are racing now:



It was a lumpy sea, overcast right up to the start, with the Catalina Eddy in close proximity (when the northwesterlies come ripping around Pt. Conception, the Southern California Bight, dropping off to the ESE and then SE, causes the wind to fall off and come winding around Catalina Island out of the south: right on shore) The boats headed out on 220° past the west end of Catalina Island, where the navigators have to make the decision how far west to go before going south.

Here's the tracking page:

TransPac 2007

[Figment]

Man those look like some WET rides!

[John B]

Thanks Kim, great to see.

[J. Dillon]

Thanks for posting them, functional but not beautiful. I find no pleasue in looking at racing machines. To my eyes they are ugly from the mast head to the keel.

Sort of like todays warships ugly not like the Fletcher class DD around during WW2.

JD

[Nicholas Carey]

This is funny -- Pyewacket is Roy Disney's boat. Roy Disney sparred with Disney over how Michael Eisner was running the company and won, resulting in Michael Eisners dismissal as CEO.

Now Disney is sponsering a Transpac challenge (Morning Light) racing against Roy Disney's Pyewacket.

Talk about moving the fight to a different venue.

[Kim Whitmyre]

It was very pleasant to get out on the water with some very nice people. After the start, we motored a bit down the breakwater, but then the breeze picked up, so the skipper set the genoa while the guests drove. So we got an afternoon sail down to Huntington Beach: first time I have used a big wheel. Very different, of course, than the tiller bar on my little cat!

[Clyderigged]

Great Pictures. I can almost see the house I grew up in near the upper right of the first photo. Memories - unfortunately I was not interested in boats back then. It was flying and airplanes, airplanes, airplanes. Dad manufacturer bikinis and had several factories in LA, Oceanside, and Mexico - it is amazing how many bikinis you can pack into a Beechcraft Bonanza . But that is another story.

BTW the old TV show "Sea Hunt" was filmed in these waters off Pt Fermin and the old Marineland of the pacific. I remember watching old LloydBridges as Mike Nelson splashing around off Abalone Cove as a wee nipper.

[Kim Whitmyre]

Here I am, looking like a tourist





Great spacious aft deck!

[John B]

Clyderigged, Your dad manufactured bikinis eh... That certainly would be a coooollll job for ones Dad to have
I grew up watching that Sea hunt program. Lloyd Bridges, man that stirs a memory or two.

You feel safe there Kim, not too rolly for you?

[farwesthoops]

Can't resist after looking at all those big timers...my oldest son crossed the starting line last Monday, skippering his own entry in the TransPac..Shanti is the smallest boat in the race at 30', sailing in Div 6, and holds the second highest handicap. I am excited and jealous. Frightening to think the Disney boat left yesterday, spotted my son 7 days and 17 + hrs head start and most likely will beat him to Hawaii.! Wild stuff. Winds have been almost non-existent so far. So all you forumites..send my son good winds and safe passage.. PS..I got to install the new fresh water tank among other things so I have a vested interest too.

[banjoman]

Looks like Shanti did pretty well over the last day or so.

Keep us updated!

[Kim Whitmyre]

Well, John, you'll notice I'm in a 3-point "stance." Here's to fair winds and following seas to Shanti, FWHoops!

Here's an update from the local paper:

http://http://www.presstelegram.com/sports/ci_6392099

Navigators in search of quickest route
Pyewacket's Honey may have gone conservative.

By Rich Roberts, Special to the Press-Telegram
Article Launched: 07/16/2007 10:48:44 PM PDT

The puzzle that plagues navigators racing to Hawaii is seldom to find the shortest course but the fastest, and this 44th biennial Transpacific Yacht Race to Hawaii has evolved into a classic example.

Pyewacket's Stan Honey said Sunday before the big boats started that he would make the call - north, south or in between - at "about 6 o'clock tonight," not far past Santa Catalina Island 22 miles off the Southern California coast - and every other eye in the race was on Honey to see which way he'd go. Wouldn't you like to know what the last Volvo Ocean Race winner was thinking?

According to Flagship tracking charts Monday, Honey may have gone conservative. Pyewacket was headed generally southwest straight toward the islands, making 13 knots, with Division 1 rivals Doug Baker's Magnitude 80 and Mike Campbell and Dale Williams' Peligroso falling in behind, well ahead of Bob Lane's Medicine Man, which tried the north for awhile before dipping back down on a parallel course.

A notable exception was Roger Sturgeon's Rosebud, a new STP 65 that flashed impressive speed in two inshore regattas leading up to Transpac. Rosebud was headed almost due south at 13 knots without losing significant distance to its division
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rivals, except Pyewacket, and building leverage for when it turns west into the trade winds.

Not far back was Morning Light, a Transpac 52 sailing at 10.8 knots but not as far south as two other Division 2 boats, the Santa Cruz 70s Westerly and Skylark, streaking side by side at 11.3 knots.

Back among the last starters in Division 2, Philippe Kahn reported from Pegasus 101, an Open 50 doublehanded entry, "At Catalina we had a decision to make. I spent an hour crunching weather information (and) Richard (Clarke) and I debated. We saw most of the fleet go north. We decided to go south. It'll take a few days to figure out who got it right."

It seems the south is paying off. David Clark, sailing the Santa Cruz 50 Adrenalin that started Thursday and led 50/52 division for awhile, wrote: "Things appear to have changed some. Breeze has been lightening and continually keeping us north of our desired waypoints. Boats north of us are taking the worst of this and those to the south are benefiting but must sail much farther."

The south scenario was advanced among earlier starters with much shuffling of the running orders in the various divisions. Those that lost miles by going south are now cashing in their strategic, if risky, investments.

New leaders Monday included Steve Calhoun's Cal 40 Psyche in Division 6, Ross Pearlman's Between the Sheets in Aloha A and Bill Myers' Cirrus from Honolulu in Aloha B.

Myers is sailing with a four-woman crew led by Lindsey Austin, 22, who was a finalist for the Morning Light team.

In a battle of Cal 40s, Calhoun had jumped to first place in Division 6 but said, "(I`m) worrying about whether to sail even farther south to cover Far Far, wondering if the rest of the fleet would just pass us by. We knew there was a bit more wind to the south. Today the weather maps showed that there was substantially more wind to the south."

It may not even be a factor. Alaska Eagle, a long-ago Whitbread Round the World Race winner that serves as the communications vessel and is sailing out in front of everyone, reported that tropical storm Cosme was feeding them some wind and helping them to pick up speed, but that "it probably will not bother the fleet on its current course."

Earlier, Ed Feo's Locomotion from Long Beach checked in with "we rounded the west end (of Catalina) a bit after 1700 (5 p.m.). We were the sixth boat, which is not too shabby for the smallest and slowest boat that started."

---------------------

Just heard that Pyewacket has been traveling at only 2knots for the last 3 hourly updates: all the other boats in her area are traveling at 8knots.

[Kim Whitmyre]

From the local rag:

Rosebud eyes Transpac leader
Pyewacket in sight three days into race to Hawaii.
By Rich Roberts, Special to the Press-Telegram
Article Launched: 07/18/2007 01:20:20 AM PDT

Rosebud and the radically modified Pyewacket - essentially fast but unknown quantities sailing their first ocean races - appeared to be lining up for a Barn Door showdown on their third days at sea in the 44th biennial Transpacific Yacht Race to Hawaii Tuesday.

Morning roll call positions and Flagship tracking showed Rosebud, Roger Sturgeon's STP 65 from Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., had ended its dive into the deep south in quest of favorable breeze and turned west toward the islands as Pyewacket, about 200 miles to the north, continued its steady slide directly down the middle of the course, trailed by several other big boats.

The latter include two vintage ULDB 70 "sleds" showing their old form. Brack Duker's Holua from Pasadena and Bill McKinley's Denali from Grosse Point, Mich., lead Divisions 2 and 3, respectively, boat for boat as well as on corrected handicap time.

At mid-day, Pyewacket, although 29 feet longer than Rosebud with a much taller 130-foot mast, was making 9.2 knots, only six-tenths of a knot faster than Rosebud, suggesting that Rosebud was sailing in better breeze - and Rosebud had logged a race high of 297 nautical miles to Pyewacket's 246 in the previous 24 hours. Also, Rosebud could enjoy a stronger sailing angle when it meets the following trade winds in the next day or so.

As for the threat of Tropical Storm Cosme from waters off Mexico, the National Weather Service said Tuesday that "the initial intensity has been conservatively lowered to 40 knots ... and the official track forecast brings Cosme near or over the Hawaiian islands in 4-5 days. The official intensity forecast maintains Cosme as a weak tropical storm through four days."

Bill Lee, the entries chairman and design "wizard" of Transpac, explained the genesis of Rosebud, the only STP 65 built so far: "After Transpac's success with the Transpac 52, thoughts arose for doing the same type of box rule for a 65-footer. The Storm Trysail Club on the East Coast beat Transpac to it and offered an ST 65. When no boats were started, Alan Andrews and Bill Tripp had a conversation and suggested a cooperative effort, the result being an STP 65 (Stormtrysail-Transpac 65).

"Transpac had a few requirements which were blended with the original boat to yield the new STP 65. Transpac wanted a faster boat with less regard to rating, so the STP 65 is slightly lighter and has slightly more sail area than the ST 65. Deep draft is fast, but because California harbors are shallow, Transpac also needed a draft of about 10 feet for harbor access. The solution: a lift keel with 16 feet of draft in the down position.

"With lots of ballast and the deep draft, the STP 65 is very stiff. She can be sailed hotter with the spinnaker set. This permitted using a fixed bowsprit instead of a conventional spinnaker pole which greatly simplified the boat. Like the TP 52, there are no runners."

Other boats that started earlier and ventured north to get above a zone of light winds were feeling the pain. Jorge Morales' Myster , a Swan 42 from Dana Point messaged: "Sailboats are not exactly Formula 1 cars and if you get stuck, you're stuck. We are stuck. Unfortunately, we've found ourselves in a large hole and have invested all last night and all day today to shift to a more southerly route. We are doing everything possible to work ourselves south to the stronger winds."

[brian.cunningham]

Looks like you had a great time out here.

Thanks for the photos.

I'm currently land locked doing a contract out in Pittsburgh, PA!

[John B]

Good to see old Infidel/Ragtime over on the SA thread.