Press Release No. 6

March 10 Safety AT Sea Seminar Qualifies Transpac Sailors

March 10 Safety AT Sea Seminar Qualifies Transpac Sailors

A Safety at Sea seminar that would qualify participants for this year's 41st Transpacific Yacht Race is scheduled Saturday, March 10, at Orange Coast College in Newport Beach.

The seminar is being sponsored by West Marine Products and is endorsed by Cruising World Magazine and US Sailing. It will be co-hosted by OCC's School of Sailing and Seamanship and the Southern California Yachting Association (SCYA) on the school's campus at 1801 W. Pacific Coast Highway.

Transpac has maintained an exceptional safety record over nearly a century of races since 1906. No sailor and no monohull entry has been lost in the 2,225 nautical miles of trackless sea between California and Hawaii - a credit to the Transpacific Yacht Club's dedication to strict requirements for skippers, crew and equipment.

Paragraph 13.2 of this year's Notice of Race dictates that "at least 30% of a yacht's crew including the skipper must have attended a US Sailing-sanctioned Safety at Sea Seminar within the last five years before the start of the race." The March 10 event fulfills that requirement.

It will be an all-day session from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The cost is $45 per person or $40 for US Sailing members. Lunch is included.

Chuck Hawley, technical advisor for West Marine Products, will moderate a team of marine safety experts who will instruct on all aspects of safety afloat. Lectures will be supported by demonstrations of man-overboard recovery systems, SOLAS flares and other visual distress signals, fire-fighting techniques, life rafts and U.S. Coast Guard crash pump and helicopter rescue procedures, the latter subject to availability.

Participants will receive a US Sailing certificate. More information is available at (949) 645-9412 or (562) 433-7426.

Information on seminars in other locations is available by contacting US Sailing at (401) 683-0800 or by e-mail: offshore@ussailing.org.

Transpac Cameo

Twenty-two years later, he's back. Among the early entries in Transpac 2001 is Dr. Edward B. Diethrich of Phoenix, Ariz., returning for his second race. He last competed on a C&C 54 named Triumph in . . . 1979? He says his son Tad, now 40, urged him to do it again, this time on their new Santa Cruz 52, which is Triumph III (Triumph II was a C&C 61).

"We sold the last C&C and got involved in other things," Diethrich said. "All along we've been looking to get back into sailing, so we decided to get the Santa Cruz."

They raced it in the Big Boat Series at San Francisco last year, and Tad also took the boat to Hawaii in the Pacific Cup.

Diethrich, a heart surgeon who founded the Arizona Heart Institute in 1971, has had three boats, all named Triumph. He recalled that the 1979 Transpac, while boasting the largest number of entries ever for the race (80), also was "a little slow. I remember that it's pretty exciting the first few days, and then you get into the highs and it's slow. Then when you start getting into the tradewinds, it is really exciting. Surfing on a big boat like that is something else."

In the slack winds of '79 it took Diethrich almost 16 days to reach Diamond Head, but he finished only four hours behind a struggling rival named Roy E. Disney.

The Diethrichs plans to race with a crew of seven. They keep the boat in San Diego and are members of the San Diego Yacht Club.

"We're hoping we can get enough S/C 52s to have our own class," he said. "That really makes it interesting."

And: "The windier the better."

Transpac Publicity:

Rich Roberts
Phone: (310) 835-2526
e-mail: richsail@earthlink.net

Entry Information:

Jerry Montgomery
e-mail: mmmont@aol.com

WEB Page:

Walt Niemczura, Web Master
www.transpacificyc.org
e-mail: walt@hawaii.rr.com