Odyssey, 'Glory and ‘Sheets down to the wire

by Rich Roberts on 24 Jul 2005 According to the latest position reports, the Centennial Transpac's oldest and fastest boats are now expected in Sunday's pre-dawn hours---the 68-year-old Odyssey 19 minutes before Hasso Plattner's high-tech maxZ86, Morning Glory, at 3:20 a.m. HST. Odyssey's Aloha A class rival, Between the Sheets, is due only 23 minutes later.

Odyssey is a 58-foot yawl that first sailed the race in 1939. The owner is Audrey Steele Burnand, who is not on board, but the skipper is her son-in-law, Cecil Rossi.

Ross Pearlman's Between the Sheets, a Jeanneau 52, won Aloha A in 2003. Those two had a six-day head start on Morning Glory and the other boats in Divisions I and II and were still running in front of everybody in Saturday morning's reports with 163 and 168 miles to go, respectively.

Morning Glory was 312 miles out but sailing almost twice as fast at 13.8 knots for the race, although it lost 28 miles to its nearest rival, Roy Disney's Pyewacket, now 34 miles behind.

Although winds were growing lighter, those two and three other boats were still on pace to beat the record of 7 days 11 hours 41 minutes 27 seconds set by Disney's previous Pyewacket in 1999.

And the first to finish is . . . Alaska Eagle?

The Transpacific Yacht Race's long time communications vessel quietly crossed the finish line off Diamond Head early Saturday morning, less than 24 hours before higher drama was due.

Alaska Eagle, was this evening at rest at the Hawaii Yacht Club after tracking the 75-boat fleet over 2,225 nautical miles from the Palos Verdes Peninsula. Once a winner of the Whitbread Round the World Race, it is owned by the Orange Coast College School of Sailing and Seamanship.