Transpac’s biennial meeting, dinner, and elections at Newport Harbor YC was a huge success this year.  The members were joined at the dock by 2011 overall winner Grand Illusion, the fabled Ragtime, crowd favorite Alaska Eagle, and the sturdy Aloha class Traveler.

Commodore Bill Lee presided over an evening...  Read More

Photo Courtesy of Doug Gifford - www.douggiffordphoto.com

Biennial Meeting

Transpac’s biennial meeting, dinner, and elections at Newport Harbor YC was a huge success this year.  The members were joined at the dock by 2011 overall winner Grand Illusion, the fabled Ragtime, crowd favorite Alaska Eagle, and the sturdy Aloha class Traveler.

Commodore Bill Lee presided over an evening which honored the 1977 Honolulu race that featured the duel between Merlin and her equally new rival Drifter and also Ragtime.  1977 was a race that changed the face of Transpac as the new lightweight “sleds” from Santa Cruz started their rise to the top of Hawaii bound racers.  Left in the dust were such famous boats as Windward Passage and Kialoa.  Merlin set her record that was to last an amazing 20 years.  On the other end of the spectrum, 5 boats were dismasted on a single night that year!

Among the crews from the 1977 race who attended the dinner was the entire crew of the Class D winning Cal 40 Vivant.

Transpac’s biennial election was heartily cheered by the crowd who were impatient to see a great slide show presented by Sharon Green of Ultimate Sailing.  Sharon’s collection of pictures and music took us through the complete race from the festivities in Long Beach, the start off Pt Fermin, the days and nights at sea, and finally the Diamond Head finishes, and the tremendous Aloha welcome provided by our Honolulu Committee and all our friends in Hawaii.

The new Board of Directors of the Transpacific Yacht Club for the coming years 2012 and 2013 are: Alan Andrews, Jon Andron, Roby Bessent, Commodore Dave Cort, Kerry Deaver, Roy Disney, James Eddy III, Honolulu Chair Carl Geringer, Robbie Haines, Tom Hogan, Stan Honey, David Lee, Vice Commodore Dan Nowlan, Ross Pearlman, Drew Satariano, Trisha Steele, Peter Tong, Tom Trujillo, Rear Commodore Bo Wheeler, and Mainland Chair Warren Wolfe.  New Commodore Dave Cort welcomed the new board and set the stage for two more great races for Transpac in the coming two years.  Leading off with our planned Tahiti Race in April of 2012, and the next Honolulu race in July of 2013.

2013 Honolulu Race Start Date

In a brief board meeting before the biennial meeting, the board confirmed Monday, July 8, 2013 as the first start date for the next Honolulu race.

2012 Tahiti Race Information

With two very fast boats entered to start from Los Angeles, Beau Geste and Rage, and two more starting from Honolulu, Chasch Mer and Moonshadow III, the Tahiti race looks like it will be on once again.  The last running of the Tahiti race was in 2008 when Magnitude 80 joined three other boats and demolished the previous record with her run of 11 days, 10 hours.  Harking back to 1977 again, it is interesting to note that in the years both preceding and following, 1976 and 1978, there were Tahiti races with four boats each time.  Coming up in 2012, Beau Geste, the Farr 80 owned by Karl Kwok, has an excellent chance at eclipsing the 4 year old record belonging to Magnitude 80’s Doug Baker.

Looking forward

In his closing remarks, Commodore Cort challenged all present to help bolster the membership in our truly unique yacht club and looked forward to more great Transpac races.

Aloha!

Photos Courtesy of Doug Gifford - www.douggiffordphoto.com

Aboard Magnitude 80, Chis Hamel (out on a limb) and Hogan Beatie set up for the drop
Photo: Kimball Livingston

Let the stories roll. Transpac 2011 is in the books, but not done and gone.

At the Mount Gay party at Waikiki Yacht Club, there was Alpha Puppy skipper Alex Farrell being poked on sailing so far north, and why, Alex, why did you go so far north?

"The fishing was better up there."

Same time, same place, Max Moosman enthusing about the ride down the Molokai Channel aboard Pendragon VI,but not on his own behalf:  "We were all so happy to see John and Susy at the back of the boat, and the boat was bombing and Susy was just giggling her head off. That's the ride that John built the boat for."

Alex Mehran and Jesse Naimark-Rowse sitting on Truth, the Open 50 that used to be Philippe Kahn's Pegasus, doublehanded record holder, and 2011 was a year when nobody could have threatened that record, but they're agreeing, having had a look at it, "That is some record."

(Philippe, meanwhile, is sailing Lasers every day off Diamond Head in prep for the Laser Masters Worlds on San Francisco Bay in August. This is the guy who says, "I have to learn how to sail before I die.")

And Michael Lawler's Traveler is unabashedly a cruiser, a round-the-world veteran at that. This is one 47-footer that could not have fit into any class other than the Aloha Division.  So, what defines a cruiser?  Well, Bo Wheeler is the Honolulu Committee Chair of Transpac 2011, and Traveler crewman Ric Sanders reports, "When Bo came to the dock to greet us, we handed him a mai tai."

Traveler got our attention as of their halfway party, when skipper Michael made a move on his longtime squeeze, Barbara Burdick, and proposed marriage. And slipped this little "ring" onto her finger.  These two met on the docks at Hawaii Yacht Club after the 2005 Transpac and circumnavigated on Traveler after the 2007 Transpac, so it's not as though this was a snap decision. And by pure serendipity, the hose clamp was a perfect fit. With just a little screwdriver adjustment. Transpac 2011, it seems was quite the hotbed of romance.

Here we have Barbara and Michael at their welcome party.
                                                                                         Photo: Kimball Livingston

And from the crew ranks of Bengal 7, we have Yasuyuki "Hei-chan" Hirano, who proposed to the lovely Jun-chan at the crew dinner....
                                                   Hei-chan and Sun-chan. Photo by Yoichi Yabe

On the Andrews 45, Locomotion, we had Dr. Jim Sears crewing, the TV guy, and Jim advises that he had been wanting for months to pop the question to Gina Liotta, but how?

"About a month before the race, I was daydreaming about the ride down the Molokai channel and had a vision of Gina, my family and friends out in a boat to watch us cross the line. As the boat approaches the line, we peel to a new spinnaker with a huge MARRY ME, GINA logo on it! I thought, "Yes! that's how I'll propose! "

Then I continued the scenario a bit farther in my mind and saw a very high likelihood of a botched peel, and a round up in full yard-sale fashion, crossing the line with a shredded marriage proposal...

"So, time for Plan B, and Plan B was to unfurl a giant banner as we were greeted at the Hawaii Yacht Club. It turned out perfectly. And Gina said yes!"

Jim walked off the boat and went straight to a knee . . .

Aloha, will you marry me? Photo by Twain Newhart

Hassle finishing Transpac 2011

On a day in which many recently-finished Transpac crews went off exploring beaches or waterfalls, Yoshihiko Murase rallied up his race crew, delivery crew and friends and cast off Bengal 7's lines for a mission of his own. The last Transpac boat still at sea was inbound, and he wanted to be there to greet Larry Malmberg's Hassle at Diamond Head.

Having brought one Bengal or another all the way from Japan for every race since 2001, Murase knows a thing or two about persistence, and the crew of Hassle had been persisting since their get-go from Point Fermin, San Pedro on the Fourth of July.  Seventeen days.

Do the math on Bengal. It's roughly 5,000 miles from Nagoya, a port city of two million on Japan's Pacific Coast, to the Transpac start line at San Pedro, California. Bengal 7 is now roughly halfway home on this trip after covering (this is very, very rough) 57,500 miles since 2001 in the name of Transpac.

Gotta love it.

There were rain showers aplenty in the morning, coming from the east, so Hassle got the rain first, then Bengal 7. But as things go in at Latitude 21, Longitude 158, everybody was dry by the 1118 HST official finish time for Malmberg's Catalina 38. Murase sailed upwind to a rendezvous point, then downwind alongside . . .

Yoshi Murase escorts Hassle to the Deamond Head buoy

The Hassle crew may not have known they were being serenaded by a ukulele . . .

A musical accompaniment

And this was the moment . . .

Hassle finishes Transpac 2011 as Bengal 7 crew salutes.