Barker joins Pyewacket for last Transpac start

by Rich Roberts on 15 Jul 2007 Roy E. Disney's powered-up Pyewacket, with America's Cup skipper Dean Barker on board, will be among the final 23 of 74 boats in the 44th biennial Transpacific Yacht Race that head for Hawaii Sunday. They'll receive a boisterous sendoff from Rainbow Harbor in downtown Long Beach at 10 a.m., followed by their start eight miles west off Point Fermin in San Pedro at 1 p.m.

Both events are public ceremonies. Each boat's crew will be introduced and saluted with an 'Aloha!' cannon blast as it departs from Transpac's mainland home port in Long Beach. The start may be viewed from Point Fermin Park where a concert is scheduled to start at noon.

Smaller boats started the 2,225 nautical miles Monday and Thursday and struggled early on with light and erratic winds that appeared to be settling into a stable pattern, as forecast, as the biggest and fastest boats join the chase.

But even Pyewacket navigator Stan Honey, who charted ABN AMRO's victorious course around the world in the 2005-06 Volvo Ocean Race and has excelled in several Transpacs, sees a challenge.

'The tricky part for all starters is that it's going to be real light in the middle of the race,' Honey said. 'It's pretty unusual for the middle of July. There's more wind to the north and south. Most boats will choose to go south.'

Most boats aren’t Pyewacket, which will be at sailing's leading edge in its maiden race. Disney 'retired' from racing after his 15th Transpac in 2005 when Hasso Plattner's Morning Glory from Germany beat him by 2 1/2 hours and his race record by 19 1/2 hours (now 6 days 16 hours 4 minutes 11 seconds).

Disney then donated his boat, a maxZ86, to the Orange Coast College School of Sailing and Seamanship, but the defeat gnawed at him for about three months until, now 77, he decided to charter the boat back from the school and pump enough improvements into it to virtually ensure getting the record back, no matter what the wind.

Pyewacket is now eight feet longer at 94 feet and has a new 130-foot mast 30 feet taller than the old one, plus humungous port and starboard dagger boards longer than surfboards that project from the cabin top when not in use, and the real eye catchers: three-foot-wide wings at the stern to stack unused sails and crew members for ballast stability.

Barker drove New Zealand's America's Cup boats in 2003 and in the recent 5-2 loss to Switzerland's Alinghi in Valencia. The wings must remind him of the 130-foot boat---still on display at the Auckland waterfront---the Kiwis used to challenge Dennis Conner for the Cup at San Diego in 1988.

Disney will be among 21 crew members on Pyewacket, but his thoughts also will be with Morning Light, a team of sailors ages 18 to 23 he recruited and trained to sail a smaller Transpac 52 in a project being filmed for a documentary scheduled for release in theaters next spring. Rick Deppe will be on board Morning Light as a cameraman but not as a member of the crew. The producers have chartered Steve Fossett's 125-foot power catamaran Cheyenne---formerly PlayStation when it set numerous sailing records---as an escort boat for production purposes only.

Eleven of the final 15 sailors, including skipper Jeremy Wilmot of Australia, will be on the boat. One of the four alternates, Steve Manson of Baltimore, has joined the Pyewacket crew; the other three will continue to Hawaii in supporting roles.

Robbie Haines, who serves the dual rule of sailing manager for Pyewacket and head coach for Morning Light, doesn't think he and Disney will be distracted by the other boat's presence in the race.

'I'm not worried about them getting there,' Haines said. 'There are going to be other boats with professionals, but after the people like Stan [Honey], [Volvo winner] Mike Sanderson and Jerry Kirby that we've had working with them for four months in Hawaii I think there's never been a team better organized or better trained to sail offshore than these 15 kids.'

Pyewacket's closest threat for the Barn Door---the huge slab of carved koa wood awarded to the monohull with the fastest elapsed time---appears to be Magnitude 80 from Long Beach. Earlier this year Doug Baker's boat blew away the 22-year-old record in the Marina del Rey to Puerto Vallarta Race by 31 hours, and in the 2005 Transpac was among five boats to break Disney's 1999 record.

The turbocharged Pyewacket is rated more than a day faster than Magnitude 80 but Baker said, 'Anything can happen, especially the way the weather is this year.'

The problem is whether to follow Pyewacket and concede to a faster boat or pick another course hoping for better breeze.

'Maybe we will go the other way,' Baker said, 'but they have an awfully good [navigator] on their boat. Do we think we're smarter than Stan Honey? If all goes well, we'd just like to beat them [on] corrected [handicap time]'---which Mag 80 did in 2005.

Every boat in the race competes for the prestigious Governor of Hawaii Trophy for first place overall on handicap time, rewarding the crew that sailed its boat, whatever size, design or age, nearest to its speed potential. Morning Light has a shot at that. It was called Pegasus when Philippe Kahn sailed it to second place overall behind Roger Sturgeon's Rosebud, also a TP52, in 2005.

This time Kahn, who also won the Barn Door in 2001 and 2003, is sailing double handed with Richard Clarke on his new Pegasus 101, a fast Open 50 design, chasing the Transpac double handed record of 10 days 4 hours 4 minutes 14 seconds set by Howard Gordon and Jay Crum in 2001.

Sturgeon, of Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., now has a new STP65 also called Rosebud that rates third fastest in the fleet, just ahead of two Long Beach boats---Mike Campbell and Dale Williams' Peligroso and Bob Lane's Medicine Man in Division 1.

As Transpac enters its second century, this race also features the youngest and oldest crews and the oldest boat ever to compete. Skipper Sean Doyle, 19, of Hawaii leads a crew of five aboard On the Edge of Destiny averaging 19.8 years (Morning Light averages 21.09). Mike Abraham and Phillip Rowe of Newport Beach are both 70 and sailing Tango.

Alsumar, a Sparkman & Stephens 70 built in 1934, was restored and is being sailed by brothers Bill and Ted Davis of Las Vegas. All of the above boats started this past week.

One, Jim Partridge's Cal 2-46 from Pasadena, dropped its sails the second day because of light winds and started to motor toward Hawaii but now, according to the Flagship satellite tracking system, appears headed back to California.

Saturday morning's position reports indicated that the boats that started Thursday avoided the doldrum-like conditions that trapped Monday's starters. Doug Grant's Tower, a Lidgard 45 from San Pedro, logged the best day of 265 miles at 11 knots average speed to leap from seventh to first in Division 5.

Transpac 2007 entries

(Standings by corrected handicap time. ORR rating allowances in parentheses in days:hours:minutes:seconds based on handicap distance of 2,300 n.m.; subtract time allowance from actual elapsed time to determine corrected handicap time)



Division 1 (Starts July 15)



Pyewacket (Reichel/Pugh 90), Roy E. Disney, Burbank, Calif. (minus-21 hours, 9 minutes, 13 seconds)

Magnitude 80 (Andrews 80), Doug Baker, Long Beach, Calif. (00:4:32:33)

Rosebud (STP 65), Roger Sturgeon, Fort Lauderdale, Fla. (1:04:09:36)

Peligroso (Kernan 70), Mike Campbell/Dale Williams, Long Beach (1:05:17:12)

Medicine Man (Andrews 63), Bob Lane, Long Beach (1:07:02:37)



Division 2 (Starts July 15)



Hugo Boss (Volvo 60), Andy Tourell, Gosport, UK (1:23:10:32)

DH-Pegasus 101 (Open 50), Philippe Kahn/Richard Clarke, Honolulu (2:00:47:54)

Samba Pa Ti (Transpac 52), John Kilroy Jr., Los Angeles (2:0