Fast, Record-setting Transpac

J/125's and J/105 Sail Fast to Silver!
(Los Angeles, CA)- The 49th edition of the 2017 biennial offshore classic, the Transpac Race that started on July 3rd, 5th, and 6th from Point Fermin in Los Angeles to the finish at Diamond Head in Honolulu 2,225nm away has finally come to a conclusion. Among the fifty-five teams, the J/crews fought hard the entire way and had their moments of stark terror interspersed with their days and days of sheer joy surfing the giant Pacific swells to Honolulu’s Diamond Head.

No question, the welcoming committee is one of the highlights of the race for the three J/crews entered in the race. After crossing the finish line, all boats are escorted to the narrow (sometimes treacherous) entrance to the Ala Wai Yacht Harbor, a safe haven from the Pacific swells. Donned in their flowered shirts, the crews stand on deck to be greeted like conquering heroes by the amplified sounds of native drums, slack key guitar music and a loud and resounding “Aaaahhh- looohhh – haaaaah” given by staff commodore Howie Mednick from the second deck of the Hawaii YC.

“We welcome you to Hawaii, and ask only that you do Drink well, Sing well, Eat well, Sleep well… and Drink well some more!”

Boats then proceed to their assigned slips, get boarded and inspected for rules compliance, and then are released to the awaiting leis and hugs of family, friends and well-wishers. Regardless of the time of day or night, every crew is given an Aloha Party of food and drink, some more traditionally Hawaiian than others, with the unshaven and weary crews growing their smiles with each re-told story and re-acquaintance with terra firma.

This is a unique feature of Transpac among the world’s ocean races: nowhere else will you find this intimate and embracing level of hospitality and respect. Finishers of the Volvo Ocean Race and Vendee Globe will experience their re-entry into life ashore under the glare of TV lights, crowds and microphones, whereas at Transpac it will be under the flickering flames of a tiki torch and the inner glow from a Mai Tai.

The lore of this hospitality reaches far and wide, as evidenced by not only entries who come every two years from around the Pacific Basin, but also those who come from the other side of the world. This year two entries from Europe were here to have the Aloha experience.

In the end, Ed Sanford’s J/105 CREATIVE team from San Diego YC sailed in 2nd place for most of the race in Class 6 and that is exactly where they finished; just four hours corrected time behind a surfing machine known as a turbo’d Hobie 33!  Not bad for a 24 year old family day sailor! Congrats to Ed and his crew for a job well done!

Then, in Class 3 were the two notoriously fast J/125s- RAISIN’ CANE and RESOLUTE.  Both teams had been blogging via Inmarsat satellite service almost every day.  The “Golden Feather Scribe Award” for the race must go to the crew on RESOLUTE- with just about all crew members offering their personal perspectives and updates on the race!  Kudos to Tim Fuller’s RESOLUTE for keeping us abreast of the experience!  They nearly won the race, both in class and overall, having been in that position for days going into the last 48 hours!  However, being just a step behind the bigger boats hurt their chances for the ultimate outcome, with much, much lighter winds hitting them just before the finish.  Even then, Fuller’s RESOLUTE took 2nd in class and 4th overall!  Congratulations to Tim and his intrepid crew that included long-time J/sailor Trevor Baylis!

In the early stages of the race, Frank Atkinson’s RAISIN’ CANE from Palm Beach, FL was amongst the race leaders, both in class and overall along with their stablemate RESOLUTE.  However, going a bit too far south slowed them down and hurt their chances for a possible 1-2 for the J/125s!  Nevertheless, it was a great performance and their 5th in class and 17th overall in a fleet of 55 boats is something to be proud of for a bunch of Floridians playing the West Coast offshore game!

To catch you up on the blogs, here were the final installments from the crew on RESOLUTE:

July 11, 2017, 1100- Tuesday
Around 11:30 this morning, it seemed like it was time to gybe (turn) and head toward Honolulu with a wind shift we'd gotten. And then, we got another one and gybed back. My right arm has been getting a workout for the past six days trimming, so I WAS happy to get a little left arm work in. Alas, it was not meant to be. I'll just have to keep having right-handed arm wrestling contests.

For anyone who has not been reading the Facebook page, you probably haven't heard about the savage flying fish attack last night. Matt got hit right in the face. The flying fish have been trying to get us for days, but have been missing (although there have been a couple of close calls). We've found a bunch on the deck and thought we had the upper hand, but I guess they're sending in their best pilots now. We'll see what happens throughout the rest of the race.

Good news: Just as I came down here to write this, the distance to our waypoint (the finish) ticked to under 700 miles! That's a real morale booster -- although things get a little trickier from here on out. Brian says we're doing well, so every decision is an important one and every knot of boatspeed counts.

We're romping happily along out here. But, the boat dreams have started to become really weird (maybe Jimmy Buffett should have written a song about boat dreams instead of boat drinks). I'm going to have to sell my car because of my dream that there was a rattlesnake inside that WOULD not leave (mom and dad, if you could handle that before I get home, that would be great) and Tim had a dream that we were waiting for an uber to finish the race. I checked my app and we're a bit out of the service area here.

I'd like to report that everything is still smelling sweetly, but it's not. It's pretty gamey down below on the boat. Almost like there are five guys living in a confined, closed in space in the tropics. But, it's only four guys... and me... and let me tell you, I'm definitely part of the problem.

Congrats to the boys on Mighty Merloe. Artie, I guess this means you're up 2 to 1 now.  -Alli

July 11, 2017, 1600- Tuesday- Resolute Turns Left... Finally
Well this morning was a great change of pace for all of us. After 5 days and 10 hours on Starboard and slowly turning right I figured Hawaii was somewhere to the left of us. That being said we made the call to gybe in hopes of finding the island. If it looks like we are going the wrong way on the tracker, please let us know. (-;

Daily standings also came out and we moved up to 2nd overall! Unfortunately, the breeze has died slightly which gives a significant advantage to the bigger boats. Needless to say, we are all giving maximum effort and doing what we can to sail as fast as possible. That includes continuing to stack our pipe berths on top of each other to the windward side. If you haven't seen the pipe berth setup on Resolute imagine a coffin 6' long, 4' high, and 2' wide. Very claustrophobic and a total bitch to get in and out of. To make things worse, A) we haven't showered in 6 days and smell fantastic B) we move the leeward pipe berth into the same coffin... Yes, we are literally sleeping on top of each other give or take 6".

Currently we are 742.1 miles to the finish. Averaging 12kn and 9.5 vmg over the last hour. Wind speed is 13-16. Waves are 4-6'.  Until next time, Brian

July 12, 2300- Wednesday- Night Sky/Day Sky
Did you guys know that if the moon is still up and bright around dawn, there is a clear demarcation between what is night sky and what is day sky? I didn't, until last night/this morning. Trevor and I were on watch and the moon was super bright. I looked behind us and dawn was just starting to break and there was a CLEAR line between what sky was still the night and what was the day. It was pretty cool.

Speaking of night, for the first time we really saw some stars last night. And, the day star came out today for the first time since the start. Before night fell yesterday, I was just making the comment that we'd seen a total of about six stars including the sun our whole trip. I wouldn't say we had a LOT of stars last night, but it at least quadrupled our count. The sun has been out most of the day today, so I'm hoping that we'll see the Southern Cross (Traci, counting on you to back me up here) tonight or tomorrow because...

...we're in the final countdown! Right now, we're thinking we probably finish Friday afternoon-ish -- which is SO soon! And that's probably a good thing because things are getting a little loony out here. Or maybe more appropriate to say "terny". This morning after Tim and Matt came up on watch, we heard a loud squawking sound. Turns out, it was Tim shouting at (to?) the terns circling overhead. The bird whisperer.

It's getting hot and stinky down below, but today has been shower day for at least some of us (so far: me and Brian), so that's always a relief. For those of you wondering, showering consists of throwing a bucket with a string overboard off the back of the boat (we're going kinda fast through the water), filling it, dumping it over your head, shampooing and soaping, and doing the bucket thing again to rinse. This far south, the water is warm and it's really a pleasant experience. To the disappointment of all on board, I'm sure, my shower was in a bathing suit rather than my birthday suit.

Everything is going well aboard Resolute, although we could use some more breeze down this final stretch! BTW, I know Brian said we turned left, but... we turned back  -Alli

July 13, 2017, 1100- Thursday
Good evening Resolute fans. Well things are changing out here, and I wish I could report for the better. The weather forecast is calling for decreasing winds tonight and tomorrow. Unfortunately, that makes it more difficult to hang in there with the bigger/faster boats in front of us. Today's position report of 1st in class and 2nd overall is clearly in doubt tomorrow if things don't improve. Tomorrow too will be a scorcher in the heat made 100 times worse if there is no breeze. I've seen this movie before and didn't like it in 2013, but all we can do is push on to the finish and play the cards we are handed. On another note, today was the second time Matt has been punished by a flying fish. The first to the face and the last to the chest. The guy cannot get a break. Anyway more to follow, and thanks for hanging in there with us.  Tim Fuller - Skipper.  Sailing photo credits- Sharon Green/ Ultimate Sailing.   Watch the Transpac sailing highlights Youtube video here    For more Transpac Race sailing informationAdd to Flipboard Magazine.


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