IN THE WIND : Sail Record to Fall After 135 Years

One of the great sailing records is about to fall.

Warren Luhrs and his crew of two aboard Thursday’s Child, a 60-foot ultra-light sloop, Thursday were 325 miles south of San Francisco and 200 miles west of San Diego.

In their grasp is sailing’s oldest undisputed speed record, the clipper ship Flying Cloud’s 89-day 8-hour passage from New York to San Francisco in 1854.

Thursday’s Child was nine days ahead of Flying Cloud’s pace after 13,650 nautical miles.

The boat logged 214 miles from noon Wednesday till noon Thursday. A storm passing over California had brought southeast winds to the racer, allowing it to sail at near top speed.

But Thursday, the wind lightened and backed to the northwest, forcing Luhrs to begin time-consuming tacking against head winds.

Luhrs now hopes to pass through the Golden Gate Saturday, instead of Friday, which he had hoped for.

Aboard with Luhrs are Lars Bergstrom, 54, of Sarasota, Fla., a naval architect who designed the boat’s towering, spaghetti-thin mast and rig, and Courtney Hazelton, 30, of Palmetto, Fla.

Thursday’s Child weighs only 19,000 pounds. Other racers that size may weigh up to 25,000 pounds and not be considered heavy. The boat was designed specifically for single-handing, and this is the first major event it has been in with a crew.

Luhrs, 44, a boat manufacturer from Alachua, Fla., single-handedly set the monohull Atlantic speed record, east to west, of 15 days in Thursday’s Child in 1984.

His participation with the boat in a solo around-the-world race in 1986-87 ended when he was dismasted twice off Australia.

In all, four boats are at sea, challenging Flying Cloud’s record. It is not a formal race, however. Each boat is on its own.

Guy Bernardin, 43, a veteran solo sailor from Newport, R.I., rounded Cape Horn Tuesday in a 60-foot monohull named BNP Bank of the West, but three stops for repairs have forced his solo effort well off the pace.

Approaching the Horn Wednesday was a French solo sailor, Philippe Monnet, alone aboard his 60-foot trimaran Elle & Vire.

Monnet, who left New York Jan. 8, was two weeks ahead of Flying Cloud’s pace and a week ahead of Thursday’s Child’s pace as he approached the Horn. Monnet is the only racer in the fleet who has not had to stop for repairs. Flying Cloud made its passage nonstop.

Behind Monnet is the only woman in the clipper race, Anne Liardet, 27, of France, aboard a 50-foot trimaran, Finistere Bretagne. Her crew is Joseph Le Guen, 41.

Their boat, battered by gales after its Jan. 1 start, was passed Sunday by Monnet.

A fifth aspirant, Georges Kolesnikovs, 46, of Newport Beach, was reported to be planning to join the race for the record this month. His 60-foot tri, Great American, Thursday was in Newport, R.I., preparing to depart for New York.

Flying Cloud made the 89-day passage twice. On her maiden voyage in 1851, she covered the 15,000 miles in 89 days 21 hours.

At least two other clippers made the voyage around Cape Horn in less than 90 days, but Flying Cloud holds the recognized mark.

No modern sailing boat has even come close. In fact, three boats have been lost off Cape Horn trying in the last six years.

Luhrs and his crew left Sandy Hook, N.J., just south of New York harbor at 9:30 p.m. on Nov. 23.

The boat sailed southwest and then south, crossing the Equator in 14 days, for an average of 220 miles a day. The time beat the clipper ship record to the Equator, set by Great Republic in 1856, by almost two days, and it beat Flying Cloud’s time by three days.

Thursday’s Child had increased the lead on Flying Cloud’s pace to 11 days when the ultra-light craft was jarred from stem to stern by a collision with something in the night sea 300 miles north-northeast of Cape Horn.

The hull was not pierced, thanks to the toughness of its outer Kevlar skin, but the core material in the sandwich construction and the inner laminate were severely damaged.

Thursday’s Child detoured to a British naval base on East Falkland Island. Luhrs, the crew and British sailors pitched in to make repairs, which were finished in two days.

With the passage clock still ticking, Luhrs forced himself to wait another day while the bonding agent cured before setting out for the Horn, for centuries sailing’s greatest hurdle.

The riskiest approach is from the east, the direction from which Thursday’s Child came.

The Southern Ocean rolls around the globe from west to east, unchecked by any land mass. The seas are driven by frequent near-hurricane force winds that create mountainous waves. Like icebergs, the waves have most of their size beneath the surface.

At Cape Horn, the bottom rises abruptly from a depth of more than 13,000 feet to 400 feet and less. The waves literally trip on this relatively shallow ground and rise into steep, towering masses of water.

Waves and wind go together. The wind off the Horn blows most frequently from the west. When vessels round the Horn, east to west, they usually find the wind and seas dead on the nose.

Today, as it has been for 450 years, the sailboat tactic has been to reach off to the southwest and then tack back to the northwest after the boat is clear of the South American land mass.

Some do not make it.

Michael Kane of Newport Beach, in his 55-foot trimaran Crusader, didn’t.

In 1983, Kane was trying for the Flying Cloud record that Luhrs has within his grasp. His three-hulled boat had already rounded the Horn when a $10 steel shackle failed. His stressed rigging gave way and the mast came down.

A Chilean naval patrol vessel came close alongside as Kane tried to organize the salvage of his boat. In the rough seas, the patrol vessel and Crusader collided, causing a hole in one of the trimaran’s hulls. The Chilean captain ordered Kane and his two-man crew aboard the patrol craft.

Kane complied, watching the crippled Crusader--which over the years he had sailed to 13 elapsed-time and first-to-finish records--disappear into the Cape’s graveyard of ships.

Next to slam into maelstrom off Cape Stiff, as 19th-Century sailors called the Horn, was Britain’s Chay Blyth.

In 1984, Blyth in a trimaran, a 53-footer called Beefeater II, left New York in pursuit of the record with a single crewman.

Blyth rounded 1 1/2 miles south of the Horn three days ahead of Flying Cloud’s pace.

The four-time circumnavigator was elated. It was a sunny day, and the wind was from the northwest at 10 to 12 knots.

A day later, it was all over. The wind had backed to the west, the waves had become cliffs and the wind had risen to 75 knots, a hurricane.

“We went from sailing to survival,” Blyth recalled later.

Risking a capsize, he turned Beefeater around and tried to run with the storm.

But the waves grabbed the boat as if were a plastic toy. The hull was lifted on a crest. The rudder came out of the water and Blyth lost all control

“We were surfing at 25 to 30 knots,” he said. “We got hit by another wave and started to broach. I dived below (where his crew was), shut the main hatch and in 3 seconds the boat went over.”

Blyth and his mate spent 19 hours inside the overturned boat before being rescued by a fishing boat that had been dispatched by the Chilean navy, which had received Blyth’s distress signal via satellite.

The most recent victim of the effort to break Flying Cloud’s record is Bernardin.

He was dismasted in a gale off Cape Horn in March, 1988, and the mast punched a hole in the boat’s aluminum hull. Bernardin, who was fourth in class in the same boat in the 1986-87 solo around-the-world race, just had time to launch his life raft and abandon ship with his satellite transponder.

That device sent the distress signal that resulted in his rescue--he was suffering from exposure--18 hours later.

On Tuesday, Bernardin passed Cape Horn again, and he was still determined to beat Flying Cloud’s 89 days to San Francisco, even if Thursday’s Child sets a new and, for him, unbeatable time.

Bernardin passed the Horn this time in sunny weather, calm seas and moderate winds, three days behind Flying Cloud’s pace.