Transpac Race : Dick Pennington’s Cheetah Leads After 43 Hours of Sailing

Variable northwest winds scrambled the leaders in the 2,225-mile Los Angeles-to-Honolulu Transpac race Saturday as Dick Pennington’s new Peterson-66 Cheetah, sailing out of the Long Beach Yacht Club, took over the elapsed-time lead after 43 hours of sailing.

At Saturday’s 8 a.m. PDT roll call, Pennington reported a position 290 miles from the start, in light to moderate winds.

It was still a close race among the Class A ultra-light displacement boats as only 10 miles separated the top eight contenders for first-to-finish honors.

Sailing three miles behind Cheetah were two of Bill Lee’s new Santa Cruz-70s, designed and built especially for line honors (first to finish) in this race. Blondie, skippered by Lee, was sailing about even with Citius, another SC-70 being sailed by a Los Angeles Yacht Club syndicate. Both reported positions 287 miles from the start.

The previous day’s leaders, Saga and Ragtime, had dropped back in the light winds. Saga was 282 miles from the start and Ragtime, in ninth place, was 276 miles out.

Cheetah’s position also gave her the class and fleet handicap lead. It was still a Class A race, despite the light going, as the first five places on corrected time were held by the big boats.

The only mishap was reported by Mike Campbell, skipper of Blast Furnace out of Long Beach. He reported a broken upper mast spreader but said the crew had made emergency repairs so the boat could continue in the race.

Larry Somers, aboard the communications boat Glory, reported freaky weather conditions Friday night, with rain, electrical disturbances and brief wind squalls up to 35 knots.

“It was like Midwest weather out here in the Pacific,” Somers said.

The other escort vessel, Night Song, was still reporting 35-knot northwesterly winds about 100 miles ahead of the race fleet.

Randy Smyth’s hopes of breaking the Multihull Transpac elapsed-time record from Los Angeles to Honolulu ended prematurely Friday, a few hours after Thursday’s start, when the crew of his 49-foot catamaran Wind Warrior discovered a crack near the base of the mast.

Smyth, an Olympic silver medalist in the Tornado catamaran class, was the skipper of Wind Warrior in a race against Rudy Choy’s 54-foot Aikane.

Smyth said the crew noticed the small crack when the wind died about 10 miles from the west end of Catalina Island. When the wind increased after the catamaran rounded the island, the crack appeared to be larger, and Smyth decided to abandon the race. The decision was made at about 3:45 a.m. Friday.

“It was the prudent thing to do, rather than having to be rescued in mid-ocean when the winds blew heavier,” Smyth said.

Choy, a resident of Honolulu and a noted catamaran designer, continued in a race against time, trying to break the record of 7 days 7 hours 30 minutes set by Bob Hanel’s 65-foot catamaran Double Bullet in 1983.