Brisk Winds Make for Fast Sailing as Two Battle in Transpacific Race

The best winds of the race shot Han Ward’s Cheval ’95 into a 20-mile lead over Rich DeVos’ Windquest on Sunday with 632 miles to go in the 38th Transpacific Yacht Race.

Sailing its maiden race, the Andrews 70 averaged 13.4 knots for 322 miles in the 24 hours preceding the morning roll call. Windquest, still sailing much farther south, averaged 11.5 knots for a 275-mile day but blew out two lightweight spinnakers within five minutes while running in 23 knots of breeze.

However, light winds through the first half of the race spoiled any chances of beating Merlin’s 18-year-old record of 8 1/2 days for the 2,225-nautical mile race.

Cheval ’95 and Windquest were the only two boats still ahead of Steve Fossett’s onrushing trimaran Lakota at Sunday’s report. Multihulls are inherently much faster than monohulls and are not eligible for the standard Transpac honors, but Lakota’s daily run of 414 miles Sunday, averaging 17.2 knots, was impressive.

If the winds hold up as expected, Lakota could break Aikane X-5’s 1989 multihull record of six days, 22 hours and 41 minutes by finishing before 11:41 a.m. PDT Tuesday.