Monday, July 9, 2001
Lead ships to come in,
sweep is possibleStar-Bulletin wire services
The tactical pas de trois among Pegasus, Pyewacket and Chance in the 41st Transpacific Yacht Race has taken off into a headlong sprint to the finish and a possible rare sweep for the winner.
The trio were all expected to cross the Diamond Head finish line sometime this afternoon.
It promises to be one of the closest finishes ever. The record is Ragtime's stunning 4-minute 31-second upset of Mark Johnson's Windward Passage in '73 -- a virtual photo finish after sailing 2,225 nautical miles across the eastern Pacific.
None will approach Pyewacket's elapsed time record for a monohull of 7 days 11 hours 41 minutes 27 seconds set in 1999, but besides the Barn Door trophy for fastest elapsed time as well as first in class in Division 1, the winner also could ultimately claim first place on handicap.
A sweep has happened only three times in modern-day Transpacs -- most recently in 1993 by John DeLaura's Silver Bullet and in '91 by McNulty with his original Chance. Both were standard ULDB 70s, not the 73- to 75-foot state-of-the-art sleds racing today.
With 277 miles to go as of yesterday's evening roll call, Philippe Kahn's Pegasus held a six-mile lead over Roy E. Disney's Pyewacket, which was nine miles in front of Bob McNulty's Chance. The latter boats were 10 and nine miles south of Pegasus, respectively, as they approached the critical jibe point for the Molokai Channel.
In other classes, James McDowell's Grand Illusion, the '99 overall winner with a home port of Haiku, Maui, held on to first place in Division 2, although David Janes' new Transpac 52 J-Bird III, of Newport Beach, Calif., held a 16-mile lead boat for boat.
Brent Vaughan's Cantata, Newport Beach, took over first place in Division 3 from Yoshihiko Murase's Bengal II, Japan, which was starting to pay the price for the extreme northerly track it has followed above the rhumb line from the start.
Meanwhile, Peter and Patricia Anderson's Stardust, a Wylie 46 from Laguna Beach, Calif., became the second Aloha Division boat to finish. Stardust finished yesterday afternoon, following the 75-foot Shanakee II by 36 hours.
The Aloha Division boats had a five- and six-day head start on the other divisions.
Transpac Web site