43rd Biennial Transpacific Yacht Race / Los Angeles to Hawaii

Transpacific Yacht Club, Jerry Montgomery, Commodore
Starts July 9, 12 and 15, 2007; WEB site www.transpacificyc.org

November 24, 2005

LONG BEACH, Calif.---The story line of the Centennial Transpacific Yacht Race of 2005 lies between opposite poles of sailing: records for the fastest and slowest passages by monohulls over the 2,225-nautical mile course from Los Angeles to Honolulu.

Hasso Plattner's Morning Glory, a maxZ86, lowered the elapsed time record for monohulls to 6 days 16 hours 4 minutes 11 seconds. Along the way the German entry blew past James and Ann Read's Camille, a Stewart 42, that took 22 1/2 days, sailing doublehanded with their Havanese dog, Sweetie Pie.

Neither made the Awards Dinner. Plattner, the world's largest supplier of industrial software, still has to run a business based in his native Germany and the San Francisco Bay area. He left soon after pre-dawn, post-race celebrations featuring the Hooter Girls, and when the hardware was handed out five days later Camille was still four days out. That left Roger Sturgeon, of Santa Cruz and Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., to soak up top acclaim from an overflow audience of 1,040 in the Renaissance Ilikai ballroom as overall winner of the race on corrected handicap time with his Transpac 52, Rosebud.

The moral is that, as always, 75 boats and crews---the second most entries in 43 races since 1906---sailed the race for all kinds of reasons. Eight boats came from foreign countries, including only the second foreign Barn Door winner after Stormvogel in 1967. Plattner, with world-class navigator Peter Isler charting the winning route and Russell Coutts, winning skipper of the last three America's Cups, also contributing his expertise in the longest race of his life, had only the slab-shaped wooden trophy as the fastest finisher in his sights.

The record, lopping about 19 1/2 hours off the old mark, was essentially a given. Design technology had leapt so far in recent years that in spite of relatively light breeze---longtime race radio communicator Grant Baldwin described "wimpy" trade winds---four other boats also broke the 1999 record of 7:11:41:27 held by Roy E. Disney's third Pyewacket. Those included Disney's fourth Pyewacket, like Morning Glory a maxZ86. Pyewacket was only 2 1/2 hours behind Morning Glory, followed by Doug DeVos's Windquest, an earlier version maxZ86 with water ballast instead of CBTF (canting ballast twin foil) technology; Doug Baker's smaller Magnitude 80 and Bill Turpin's 77-foot Scout Spirit chartered from the Newport (Calif.) Sea Base.

Before the race Disney, 75 (a year for every entry?), said it would be his last; he and Patty planned to kick back and go cruising. After the race, Baldwin, 78, also bowed out from his role as the racers' link to the outside world since 1979, saying it was his last voyage on Alaska Eagle, the communications vessel. Both were honored at the Awards Dinner, where attendees saw videos of race highlights and tributes to Disney, who delivered his formal farewell to the event he promoted and helped to reshape in 15 races over 30 years.

Then he ascended the podium and dead-panned, "Did I say I was quitting?"

Turning serious, he added, "This race is not about the big boats. It's about the Cal 40s, it's about B'Quest's disabled sailors, it's about Bubala and the old geezers. Keep doing this. I've brought all four of our kids up on it. Thank you, all of you."

Later, with Morning Glory boat captain Peter Pendleton, Disney did the honors of updating the hands on the 18th century-style clock trophy he commissioned six years earlier to mark the current record.

Pendleton also received the Don Vaughn Trophy as the outstanding crew member on the fastest boat, chosen by his crew mates.

Ivan Chan Wa, director of pier operations---i.e., maintaining order in the upheaval afflicting the Ala Wai Yacht Harbor, including the displacement of "Transpac Row"---was honored as top volunteer on the Honolulu Committee.

Appropriately, the Centennial fervor also produced Transpac's oldest crew (Bubala's six "geezers" ranging from 66 to 72) and the oldest boat (Odyssey). Also notable: the Challenged America team from San Diego back to prove its merit on equal terms with able-bodied crews; Soap Opera, the doublehanded Hobie 33 from Texas that swept speed and handicap honors from fully crewed rivals in Division V; Jamie Neill's Australian pocket rocket Super 30, The Cone of Silence (remember Maxwell Smart?), only 31 feet but the fastest boat under 50; the first doublehanded women's team on Charmed Life, and the first coed doublehanded crew, the Reads, not counting Sweetie Pie.

Odyssey, a 68-year-old, 58-foot yawl that first sailed the race in 1939, had a six-day head start in Aloha A class and, for a tantalizing time, had hopes of finishing first. The skipper was Cecil Rossi, son-in-law of the non-sailing owner, Audrey Steele Burnand, and the crew included Scott Abrams, grandson of Transpac's founder, Clarence MacFarlane.

"I gotta go," Abrams said at the start. "My grandfather did it a hundred years ago."

Along the way someone on Odyssey found a long-forgotten rum bottle behind a cushion---perfect for a special ceremony planned at the finish off Diamond Head to scatter the ashes of Rossi's former sailing partner, Lorenzo "Plazi" Miller, who had died five months earlier. Miller was skipper and Rossi a crew member on Mir, which won Transpac immortality in 1969 by sailing backwards across the finish line after its mast broke at the end of the race.

After Odyssey finished, Morning Glory sailed through Miller's drifting ashes less than an hour later, but Ross Pearlman's deluxe Jeanneau 52, Between the Sheets, beat both boats to the line, albeit with the six-day jump given the Aloha fleet.

The Cone of Silence had high hopes after its aborted effort two years earlier, going super-light with a four-man crew. But, O'Neill said, "Sadly, we never got our conditions. This year’s Transpac was unusually light, 80 per cent of it under 13 knots. To hang in with the big boys we need to plane, [and] to plane in light winds sports boats need to sail hot angles. The net result is that you [do] lots of miles with pretty poor VMG while the big boys simply pole back and sail hull speed at the mark. We must have sailed 400 more miles than 50s we were racing with."

With such a range of technology and talent, it was appropriate that Pendleton, representing Plattner, and Lloyd Sellinger, 72, representing dreams that never die, sat at opposite ends of the head table at the annual post-race press conference at Waikiki Yacht Club, with this diverse lineup in between:

•Tom Garnier, of Portland, Ore., who with five members of his family---including brother Al of San Pedro, the next Transpac commodore in 2007---sailed their J/125, Reinrag2 (Garnier spelled backwards), to its second-consecutive win in Division III.

•Steve Rossi, of San Diego, who on the 1D35 Tabasco led the Alamitos Bay Syndicate to a runaway win in Division IV---first to finish and first on handicap time. They chartered the boat from John Wylie, who donated a new spinnaker to the effort.

•Davis Pillsbury, 67, of Colorado, who went south of his 13 Cal 40 rivals and sailed Ralphie to a runaway win, celebrating the class's 40th Transpac anniversary. Ralphie was also fifth overall on handicap time, trailing only three Transpac 52s and Rob and Suzanne Fleming's Nelson/Marek68, Coruba, from Seattle.

•Pearlman of Marina del Rey, who sailed Between the Sheets to a second-consecutive win in the Aloha A class by correcting out on Odyssey by 8 minutes 10 seconds.

•Derek Brown, representing owner/skipper Larry Hillman of Chicago, whose Swan 48, So Far, led wire-to-wire in the Aloha B class and corrected out on Between the Sheets, as well, for the overall Aloha victory.

•Disney, who said, “We had some great races and some not-so-great races, but you always end up in Hawaii with the wonderful weather and hospitality.”

•Scott Self and Nigel Brown of Rockwall, Tex., who scored a remarkable triple victory with a minimal $20,000 budget on their Hobie 33---“the new hot boat in ocean racing,” according to Transpac Commodore Jerry Montgomery’s whimsical observation. They finished first and won overall in Division V, as well as among seven doublehanded boats.

•Sturgeon, whose three-year-old Rosebud became the second-consecutive Transpac 52 to win the King Kalakaua Trophy as first overall on handicap time by sticking close enough to Philippe Kahn’s new TP 52, Pegasus, to correct out by 39 minutes in a Division II midnight showdown.

•Urban Miyares, the blind bowman of B’Quest ("I'm the lookout," he reported during the race) and co-founder of the Challenged America team for sailors with disabilities, which finished fourth in Division V on equal competitive terms among eight boats, despite sailing one man and a couple of arms and legs short.

•Sellinger, the Newport Beach septuagenarian who finished 13th in the Cal 40 group, yet realized his “impossible dream” and “had tears (of joy)” in his eyes when they crossed the finish line.

Only two boats---John MacLaurin’s Davidson 52, Pendragon IV, and Don and Betty Lessley’s Cal 40, California Girl---retired early with worrisome breakdowns and returned intact to mainland ports.

Two Transpac icons, Ragtime and Merlin, maintained their tie for most Transpacs at 13, finishing eighth and 10th overall in Division II.

Besides Morning Glory and Pyewacket, the Reichel/Pugh firm of San Diego also designed Rosebud and The Cone of Silence, which averaged 8.58 knots for the race but was three hours shy of correcting out on Reinrag2.

Morning Glory averaged 13.9 knots to Pyewacket’s 13.7, Genuine Risk’s 13.4, Doug Baker’s Magnitude 80's 13.0 and Doug DeVos’s water-ballasted maxZ86 Windquest's 12.8. Magnitude 80, an Andrews 80 that was a departure from its larger rivals with more locals than pros on board, also corrected out on everyone except Morning Glory in Division I and, as in '99 when he sailed a smaller boat, Baker was among those breaking the record.

“These boats are fantastic,” Plattner said of the maxZ86s. “With the canting keels we have less weight and better righting moment. It’s a pity that more people aren’t joining in.”

Although the leaders didn't see 20 knots of wind until reaching Molokai, Isler said, “This boat goes so fast effortlessly, it’s amazing . . . 21, 22, 23 knots and you don’t have the sensation of speed you have on a smaller boat. Everybody got a lot of sleep. It’s a pretty painless way to go on this boat in these (relatively mild) conditions.”

“It’s not fair," joked Morgan Larson, who sailed as a watch captain opposite Coutts. "It shouldn’t be allowed. It’s too fast."

But the future of the maxZ86 class was uncertain. After the race Disney donated his to the Orange Coast College of Sailing and Seamanship, leaving only Morning Glory and Windquest on the scene as even more powerful 30-meter machines were becoming de rigueur.

Morning Glory led most of the way after the three top boats surprised some observers by going their own ways as soon as they passed Santa Catalina Island late on the first afternoon.

“We stayed together for the first five hours,’ Plattner said. “Then we saw that Pyewacket was going north and we were heading south. Then the next day we swapped.”

That continued until Genuine Risk, a 90-footer powered down to meet the rating limit, dropped off the pace despite the presence of Ken Read and Mark Rudiger on board, and Morning Glory was able to put Pyewacket behind it by as much as 71 miles. Pyewacket steadily cut that deficit in half the last couple of days but never got closer than about 30 miles.

“It was great fun until the last minutes when we had a little adrenaline rush with Pyewacket,” Plattner said. “When they came back (Saturday) we were worried.”

Isler sailed the previous race on the older Pyewacket when Kahn’s Pegasus, a 77-foot maxi-sled, ducked south early to gain an edge it never relinquished and went on to win its second Barn Door.

Asked if he was thinking about that, Isler said, “Oh, yeah. Having got stung once by just relying on [technical data], we relied more on what was the best path to take.”

Morning Glory passed Diamond Head in the dark without flying a spinnaker. Plattner and Isler said they had overstood by delaying their final jibe to be sure they could lay the finishing buoy and then had to sail too high an angle to keep the asymmetrical chute filled.

“But we still crossed the line doing 16 knots,” Isler said.

Two nights later, Sturgeon didn’t know he had won until he crossed the line, more than three hours after Pegasus. Pegasus owed Rosebud, an older-generation member of the TP 52 class, 3 hours and 50 minutes.

“We didn’t know when [Pegasus] finished,” Sturgeon said. “We were blasting all out up to 23 knots off Molokai. The winds were over 25 with gusts to 30.”

Kahn expected the worst.

“I think they probably won,” he said at a subdued welcome party as Rosebud bore down on Diamond Head. “They did a good job.”

So Transpac’s big winners duplicated the previous year’s Newport-Bermuda Race when Morning Glory was first to finish in record time and Rosebud won overall, the latter a rare double in America’s premier ocean races.

The official 2005 TransPac Yacht Race Website http://www.transpacificyc.org
Website © 2004/2005
Doug Vann, Lisa Niemczura, Walt Niemczura