Of course everyone who finishes,


or even starts, the Pacific Cup race from San Francisco to Hawaii is a winner, but some of our winners also got trophies for winning a little faster. The 2010 race was, to put it mildly, different. The entry list had several points of note, but all will agree that the big story was the weather.


Fifty-five entries qualified to race,


starting with a pair of our smallest ever entries, the 21-foot Mini Transats designed for Atlantic Ocean racing, to the long waterline of the Santa Cruz 70, built for speed. Most of the entrants clustered in the forty to fifty foot range. Depending on the specifics of the boat, this can be an affordable family vessel, manned by mom, dad, and the kids, or it can be an all-out racing machine including professional crew like Chip Megeath’s Criminal Mischief. Fourteen of the entrants doublehanded, sailing with just two crew aboard. Our youngest team, James Clappier


and Cody Spruce, each 21, raced on Furthur, a Santa Cruz 27 they bought for $5,000 and worked like mad to prepare and then trucked from Florida to California for the start. None of our crews declared themselves the oldest. Many boats raced with multiple


family members aboard, including Andromeda, racing out of Mexico, with father Antonio Luttman aboard along with daughter Ana and others, and Rapid Transit, with James and Cree Partridge and other members of their family. Dart was a father/son effort, with dad John Crutcher celebrating his 76th birthday during the race. Our international contingent, in addition to Andromeda, included


48° NORTH, SEPTEMBER 2010 PAGE 74


This offshore zone of high pressure has fine weather with very little breeze at its center. It’s the kind of weather you’d like to vacation in, and sailors whose courses take them too close will find themselves there for a prolonged period. Normally, however, the high is surrounded by clockwise winds that get stronger as you move away from the center. This leads most racers to seek an optimum course sailing in an arc south of the shortest distance to Hawaii, but designed to find strong enough wind to propel their boats at maximum speed. Not this year. While a high-pressure


zone appeared to form near its usual spot, another weather system well to the south shifted the traditional “race” winds well to the north. The few boats who adopted the traditional southerly route soon found themselves running out of “gas” and were forced to head back north just to keep moving. As a testament to the impact of


From left to right: The youngest team, James Clappier & Cody Spruce, raced on “Furthur,” the crew of “Tule Fog,” took 1st in the Double Hande 2 division; the crew of “Horizon,” taking first in class and first overall. Above center: local sailor, John McPhail of “JAM” with his family.


two Canadian boats: Whistler V and Scaramouche V. From down under: Limit, the splendid racing machine with an Aussi/Kiwi crew and one Irishman. Peru brought us Mirage, skippered by Hector Velarde out of the confusingly- named Waikiki Yacht Club of Peru. In a normal race year, skippers and


navigators know that a predictable phenomenon called the Pacific High will form at about the time of the race.


weather information and routing software available to sailors, virtually all racers adopted their northerly courses early in the race, to one degree or another. Back on shore, race officials were startled to see, day after day, that the courses taken were all north of the “rhumb line,” a straight line on the map from start to finish, generally viewed as the northernmost sensible course. The final group of starters, the fastest boats in Division E, took the northerly plan to an extreme, in some cases sailing slightly away from Hawaii as they positioned themselves north for their drive to the finish line 2070 miles away. Had the chal lenge of wind


distribution been the only one, it would have been an interesting enough race.


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