First Pacific Cup Boats Close in on Finish Line in Hawaii

Hawaii started serving Mai Tais to winners late Thursday evening as the TP52 Saga became the first boat to cross the Pacific Cup finish line off Kaneohe, HI with an elasped time of 7d 12:56:24 followed by the Wylie 70 Rage with an elapsed time of 7d 19:39:35. Lucky Ducky was third across the line and corrected out first in the Ocean Navigator ORR 2 fleet*.

The J/125. Velvet Hammer finished with an elapsed time of 8d 14:55:48 correcting out first in Ocean Navigator ORR 1. On board Velvet Hammer are skipper/navigator James Nichols, with crew James Clappier, Chris Jordan, Will Paxton, Mike Blunt, and Cassidy Lynch.

At this stage the next boats are expected to tie up later today and throughout the weekend and coming week. At this stage five boats have retired: Rum Tum Tugger, Rapid Transit, Pendragon, Keaka, and Imagine.

Latitude race editor Christine Weaver has been receiving communications from the crew aboard Pell Mell, who are currently estimated to finish on Sunday. This report came in early this morning. “Has been a crazy day of squalls, little sleep and sailing at mixed speeds. After last night’s squall encounter, it left us very tired and a bit gun shy. Some squalls have nothing, some 40+ kts. They have been a challenge for us for sure.” But we believe the crew are all doing fine and are in good spirits, even though they’re already “starting to pull clothes out of the ‘dirty bag’ from earlier in the race to replenish the ones we are soaking in.”

We don’t yet have any photos of the finishers, but we hope to share some soon on our social pages — Facebook.com/Latitude38 / Instagram.com/latitude38magazine and in next week’s ‘Lectronic.

Fun fact: Pac Cup standings are usually shown on the tracker with a four-hour delay. Why? “That delay is one that has been applied since we started using trackers in about 2006. Its purpose is to preserve the ‘shooting in the dark’ aspect of offshore racers, where we normally don’t know where each other are till hours later. The last 200 miles are now shown live.”

The Pacific Cup, also known as the Fun Race to Hawaii, is 2070 miles across the Pacific from San Francisco to Kaneohe, Hawaii. It was first organized in 1980, and runs every even-numbered year, usually with a fleet of between 50 and 70 boats. This year a fleet of 64 boats took to the start lines, with entrants sailing under flags from the USA, Canada, Jamaica, Poland and Switzerland.

Editor’s Note:
In Wednesday’s ‘Lectronic Latitude newsletter we inadvertently included a photo of Erica Mattson and Robin Jeffers’ Moore 24 Accelerando in our lead story about a rescue off Honolulu. This led some to believe it was the Pacific Cup boat crew that had needed assistance. This was not correct, and we apologize for our error and any alarm we caused.

*Correction: This story was updated as we incorrectly stated that Velvet Hammer was the first boat to finish when it was actually the TP52 Saga that finished first. Thanks to Cam Tuttle and Saga crew member Johannes Neuendorf for keeping us on course.