First Four Finishers in 50th Transpac
MOD70 Trimarans Arrive
The festivities surrounding the 50th edition of the Transpac race have kicked into high gear with the arrival of the first four yachts in Honolulu. First, the MOD70s Argo and PowerPlay came streaking across the finish line at the Diamond Head buoy under the cloak of darkness on Wednesday night. After racing more than 2,200 miles across the Pacific, Jason Carroll and crew on Argo managed to hold off Peter Cunningham’s hard-charging PowerPlay team to claim line honors by just 29 minutes.
Some six hours and change later, Giovanni Soldini and team on the MOD70 Maserati sailed into Waikiki to begin a sunrise party that lasted much of the day. A much-anticipated rivalry, the three MOD70s delivered the goods with a four-and-a-half-day match race between the top two boats, with Maserati only a handful of hours back despite sustaining significant damage to the port ama and appendages on their trimaran.
Jason Carroll, one of the most prolific owner/drivers in the history of the sport, was ecstatic to be the first boat into Honolulu. “Every offshore yacht racer’s dream is to sail this race, and this is my first time ever in Hawaii… The full moon was with us pretty much every night guiding us safely here… It was four and a half days of anticipation to find out if we were going to beat out the competition. It came down to a pretty close race in the end, so this was a great celebration.”
Certainly one of the major keys to Argo’s victory was that they were able to negotiate a vicious Catalina Eddy that trapped much of the fleet in Long Beach on Saturday afternoon and evening. When navigator Anderson Reggio managed to thread the needle and get Argo out to the synoptic breeze before the competition, it proved to be the race’s decisive move. Argo jumped out to a 100-mile lead overnight. PowerPlay was in hot pursuit for more than 2,000 miles and ultimately came up just short of catching Argo. Once dockside at Waikiki Yacht Club, the two crews — including several veterans of Lloyd Thornburg’s Phaedo3 program — congratulated each other and celebrated well into the night.
Barn Door Finish
Almost exactly 24 hours after Argo and PowerPlay finished, the world’s fastest monohull Comanche came rumbling across the finish line to claim the coveted Barn Door. That honor is now reserved for the fastest monohull in the race — a departure from past years when the rule was more prohibitive and required entries to have a fixed keel.
The 100-ft VPLP/Verdier super-maxi owned by Jim Cooney and Samantha Grant draws too much to get into the Ala Wai Harbor, and so had to go a few miles farther down and dock at Honolulu Harbor. Arriving to another warm Honolulu reception full of aloha, the mostly Australian and Kiwi team, including California native Stan Honey, celebrated a successful race while contemplating what may come next.
“Transpac was a fantastic experience for us,” commented skipper Jim Cooney. “This was our first major event in foreign waters since acquiring the boat. It was a huge commitment to ship the boat over and do the race, but it’s just been fantastic. My son James has become the architect for our plans. It was his idea for us to do the Transpac. We’ll sail the boat home and focus on another Sydney Hobart, but the Caribbean 600 may be in our future.”
The Irens 63 trimaran Paradox and the 100-ft super-maxi Rio100 are the next boats expected in to Honolulu, followed by a handful more on Saturday before the flood gates blow open, with the bulk of this record-setting fleet expected to finish between Sunday and Tuesday. Watch them come in on the tracker at http://yb.tl/transpac2019, and look for our feature in the August issue of Latitude 38.