Transpac Faster 40's started with dramas.

by Rich Roberts on 1 Jul 2001 Some of the newest and fastest monohull sailboats in
the world will start the 41st Transpacific Yacht Race to Hawaii Sunday, but
for human drama they may not be able to match their smaller colleagues who
started Saturday.

As the other Division III and IV boats crossed the starting line, Dan
Doyle, a Honolulu real state investor sailing the smallest boat in the
race, appeared to have his hopes dashed for the third consecutive race,
this time by equipment failure. But with a little help from some friends,
Doyle and crew Bruce Burgess, sailing the 30-foot Two Guys On the Edge as a
doublehanded entry, were able to get under way 47 minutes late.

On Sunday 12 of the largest boats among 33 entries will head out over the
2,225-nautical mile course chasing down the smaller ones, including the
eight slower Aloha Division competitors that have been struggling in
lighter-than-normal winds since they started last Monday. The three
favorites to post the fastest elapsed time are Roy E. Disney's 73-foot
defending champion and record holder Pyewacket and two news boats: former
winner Bob McNulty's 74-foot Chance and Santa Cruz software developer
Philippe Kahn's 75-foot Pegasus.

Pyewacket's record is 7 days 11 hours 41 minutes 27 seconds set in 1999,
when winds were stronger than normal.

Mark Rudiger, a Transpac veteran, is the navigator on Pegasus who charted
EF Language's victory in the Whitbread Round the World Race three years
ago. 'All we need is 20 knots [of wind] or better to set a record,' Rudiger
said.

But that may be asking too much this year when the forerunning Aloha boats
are finding only 12-15 knots even in the trade winds a few hundred miles
down the course.

Pushing the top three will be Merlin, the Transpac icon that in 1977 set a
record that stood for 20 years, and a pair of new Transpac 52s, David
Janes' J-Bird III Yassou from Newport Beach, Calif. and Jim and Nancy
Demetriades' Yassou from Beverly Hills. The latter two have shown uncommon
speed for their size in tune-up events but remain untested on a
Transpac-type course.

Merlin, on the other hand, along with the legendary Ragtime, will share the
record of most Transpacs at 12 when the race starts at 1 p.m. PDT.
Restaurateur Al Micallef of Fort Worth, Tex. is the latest of a series of
owners but the first to restore the skinny 68 1/2-foot boat to its original
glory.

Micallef has renamed it Merlin's Reata -- 'rope,' or 'lariat' in Spanish --
for his group of three upscale cowboy restaurants, has completely rebuilt
the boat's deck and interior and given it a flashy $50,000 paint job
featuring the mythical magician twirling a lariat.

'If we have light air to start, I think we'll have a chance to stay up
there with [Chance, Pyewacket and Pegasus],' Micallef said. 'And with our
canting keel and [removable] dagger board, we'll be fast when we're on the
wind, too.'

Light air has been the order of the day so far. The Alohas had only 4 1/2
knots and it was 2.8 knots when the gun fired Saturday, although as a
marine layer dispersed and the sun came out the breeze rose to 6 by the
time Two Guys On the Edge got going, then to 9 as the fleet disappeared
into the haze of the San Pedro channel toward the west end of Santa
Catalina Island.

Four years ago Doyle started the race only to suffer a broken rudder,
forcing him to drop out. Two years ago a business crisis prompted him to
replace himself at the last minute with Les Vasconcellos, who with Burgess
outsailed several larger, fully crewed boats.

Saturday, moments after the four-minute warning gun had sounded, Burgess
attempted to raise the headsail but found it wouldn't fit into the groove
of the headfoil. He removed his lifejacket -- required by Transpac rules to
be worn for the start and finish -- and slammed it to the deck. Then Doyle
did the same, and they slumped together in the cockpit in despair.

Doyle told observers on a press boat, 'We broke our headfoil the other day
and ordered a new one, and the new one was the wrong size. We're finished.'

But then Cabrillo Beach Yacht Club member Kirk Wilson, who had brought his
52-foot sailboat Bay Wolf out to watch the start, pulled alongside and
offered a suggestion: raise the headsail by just attaching it by the head
and tack; meanwhile, he and his crew would strip off their own headfoil and
cut it down to size to fit Doyle's Sonoma 30.

Doyle and Burgess' hopes came back to life. As they raised the jib and
worked their way into position to start, Wilson's crew Richard Parlette
worked on the headfoil and handed it over to Burgess, who would install it
later. The act of receiving such outside assistance during the race will no
doubt draw a penalty of uncertain weight, but at least Doyle is sailing the
Transpac.

As it was, Two Guys On the Edge wasn't the last boat across the line
Saturday. That was Bill Allan's Fast 40 LawnDart from, Nanaimo, B.C., which
arrived an hour tardy for no apparent reason.

'We're mainly stupid,' a crewman told the press boat before they started 54
minutes late.

Yet another mishap was suffered by Greg Sands' Firebird from Long Beach,
Calif. The 55-foot boat struck the buoy at one end of the line and had to
return to start properly. Seth Radow's new Sydney 40 Bull from Marina del
Rey led the start, followed by Yoshihiko Murase's Bengal II entry Nagoya,
Japan

Friday night's Aloha sendoff dinner on the Queen Mary was a sellout with
360 guests, topped by 40 tickets (four tables) purchased for the crew and
supporters of Michael Abraham's entry Watercolors from Newport Beach,
Calif. The crew numbers two; the other 38 were guests. Watercolors, a Sabre
402, is a doublehanded entry in Division IV.

For all positions www.transpacificyc.org.



Standings on June 30 (by handicap ratings):

ALOHA DIVISION A
1. Seda (Ericson 41), Josef Sedivec, Bonita, Calif., 1,586 miles to go.
2. Willow Wind (Cal 40), Wendy Siegal, Sunset Beach, Calif., 1,567.
3. Shanakee II (Pedrick 75), Jim Warmington, Balboa, 1,426.
4. Bonaire (Moody 65), Gil Jones and Associates, Newport Beach, 1,497.
5. Sea Dancer (Ericson 35), Al Wheatman, Marina del Rey, 1,616.
6. Gecko (Tartan 41), Jim Fabrick, Laguna Beach, 1,611.

ALOHA DIVISION B
1. Axapac (Wylie 39), Barry Ruff, Vancouver, B.C., 1,511.
2. Stardust (Wylie 46), Peter and Patricia Anderson, Laguna Beach, 1,490.