Windquest and Bengal II arrive for Barn Door

by Rich Roberts on 2 Jul 2005 Dick and Doug DeVos's Windquest, one of three maxZ86s that will battle for the Barn Door later this month, arrived in Rainbow Harbor Friday morning, just after Japanese entry Bengal II.

For Windquest, the relatively short sail from San Diego was a routine final leg, following an arduous overland trip to California from its home in Holland, Michigan. The truck and an extra-long trailer hauling the mast and keel slipped off a road in Arkansas. The 125-foot spar was twisted out of shape and had to be replaced with one shipped from the East Coast.

Bengal II, Yoshihiko Murase's Ohashi 52, had a long but less eventful trip from Hawaii, where it had been berthed since sailing in the 2003 Transpac. Bengal II followed the usual course of boats sailing from Hawaii to California by going north far enough to catch the winds rotating east off the top of the Pacific High.

‘We went to 41 (degrees latitude),’ delivery crew member, Miura Tadash,i said (about the latitude of the California-Oregon border). ‘We sailed almost 3,000 nautical miles in 17 days 18 hours.’

‘That's about normal,’ veteran ocean racer and navigator John Jourdane of Long Beach said. ‘I usually go about that high coming back.’

Hasso Plattner's maxZ86, Morning Glory, is due in Rainbow Harbor July 11. The other maxZ86 entered is Roy Disney's Pyewacket.