Trimaran Breaks Cape Horn Challenge Record

Unemployed, under-funded, every bit an underdog--and under the Golden Gate Bridge in record time.

Georgs Kolesnikovs, son of Latvian refugees and a self-styled “middle-aged cruising sailor,” fooled the experts Friday when he finished the 14,000-mile Cape Horn Challenge from New York in 76 days, 23 hours, 20 minutes 17 seconds.

That broke the record set last February by Warren Luhrs, a Florida sailboat builder whose time of 80 days, 20 hours, 17 minutes had broken the legendary record of 89 days, 8 hours set by the clipper ship Flying Cloud in 1854.

Capt. Josiah Creesy’s Flying Cloud measured 225 feet. Luhrs and a crew of two sailed a 60-foot monohull named Thursday’s Child. Kolesnikovs, 47, and crew Steve Pettengill, 37, sailed a 60-foot trimaran named Great American, after Kolesnikovs’ former public relations business in Newport Beach.

What it all means, Kolesnikovs said, is that it has been proven that multihulls are seaworthy, contrary to earlier opinion.

Some 250 boats have sought Flying Cloud’s record for more than a century, but the Cape Horn Challenge was a concentrated effort sanctioned by New York’s Manhattan Yacht Club.

Kolesnikovs, delayed by lack of money, was the fifth and last to try, leaving New York on March 10, more than three weeks after Luhrs had finished. Two other multihulls also finished, but one of the two monohulls--sailed single-handed by Guy Bernardin--gave up after a series of mishaps over 121 days.

All but Kolesnikovs had to go into port for repairs along the way--a fact noted by Luhrs in a congratulatory telegram.

Kolesnikovs also had his share of problems, but Pettengill, whom Kolesnikovs praised for his mechanical skills, was able to effect repairs under way.

Twice Pettengill patched holes with fiberglass after Great American struck unidentified flotsam. He also refitted a broken gooseneck (the joint that attaches the boom to the mast) and jury-rigged a forestay when theirs snapped last week 500 miles off the coast of Mexico, causing fear that the mast would fall down.

Pettengill, a dedicated sailor who used to drive a truck in Michigan, also estimated that he climbed the 75-foot mast to fix things “about 15 times” during the voyage.

“We think we’re in a special category, not only nonstop but self-sufficient,” Kolesnikovs said.

The effort cost more than $300,000--”everything I own,” Kolesnikovs said, “plus $100,000 that I don’t own.”

He had several product suppliers but no major sponsors.

But with the sale of his public relations business two years ago, Kolesnikovs was able to buy the seven-year-old boat and move to Newport, R.I., to prepare it. He hired Pettengill to help rig the craft, then asked him to come along.

Pettengill seldom says no. Next week he’ll start a single-handed race from Newport to Bermuda and hopes to compete in the BOC single-handed around-the-world race next year.

Waving a bottle of champagne and clutching a bouquet of roses, he yelled to a friend at the dock, “Hey, let’s go sailing!”

Few observers gave Kolesnikovs a chance. Even his parents, who fled Latvia near the end of World War II and now live in Niagara Falls, Ontario, had their doubts.

However, they were there to greet him when he sailed across the official finish line between a flagpole at the Pier 39 tourist complex and the lighthouse on Alcatraz Island at 10:46:45 a.m. PDT.

He had been less than 30 miles off the Golden Gate at midnight Thursday after battling gale-force head winds for three days. But then the wind dropped, and Great American was left to wallow helplessly in sloppy seas--in fact, slipping backward against a four-knot ebb tide until a south wind filled at 9:30 a.m.

Then the sturdy craft sailed through the bay entrance in the spray of a fireboat with a few spectator boats alongside.

Kolesnikovs recalled: “There were a lot of people back in Newport (R.I.) who were saying, ‘Oh, don’t take these guys seriously.’ All the ocean-routing experts (said), ‘You’re leaving too late . . . don’t go. You’ll never make it. It’s gonna be too cold, too dark.’ ”

Swigging champagne from a large silver cup presented by the Manhattan Yacht Club, Kolesnikovs gloried in the record, saying, “I’d like to hold onto it for, oh, 135 years”--which was how long the late Capt. Creesy held it.

“I did this to have a good time,” Kolesnikovs said, “and I did . . . a heck of a good 77 days.”

CAPE HORN CHALLENGE 1988-89 How competitors fared in the 1988-89 New York to San Francisco via Cape Horn race. Competitors were trying to beat the time of 89 days, 8 hours done by Captain Josiah Creesy sailing the clipper ship Flying Cloud in 1854:

Boat (Captain) Time Thursday’s Child (Warren Luhrs) 80 days, 20 hours, 17 minutes Elle & Vire* (Philippe Monnet) 81 days, 5 hours, 25 minutes Finistere Bretagne* (Anne Liardet) 99 days, 14 hours BNP/Bank of the West (Guy Bernardin)** withdrew after 121 days Great American* (Georgs Kolesnikovs) 76 days, 23 hours, 20 minutes, 17 seconds

*--Multihull

**--Singlehanded