Transpac up maximum limit

2007 race will allow new generation of 30m maxis

The Transpacific Yacht Club has set a tentative speed rating limit for the 44th race from Los Angeles to Honolulu in 2007 that seeks to continue the tradition of battles for the Barn Door.

The decision by the board of directors states a rating limit "similar to 2005, with a length limit of 30 meters." This length limit will bring some consistency between the larger boats eligible to compete in the Transpac and in the Newport-Bermuda Race.

The board retained the right to consider raising the size and rating limit, but only if an established group of bigger and faster boats indicates a serious commitment to participate in the race.

This year Hasso Plattner's maxZ86 Morning Glory was the scratch boat when it led a five boat assault on the record for monohulls in 6 days 16 hours 4 minutes 11 seconds while collecting the Barn Door slab of carved koa wood traditionally awarded to the monohull with the fastest elapsed time.

Randall Pittman's slightly larger 90ft Genuine Risk had to power down to meet the rating limit and posted the third fastest elapsed time behind Roy Disney's maxZ86, Pyewacket. Two other boats - Doug Baker's Andrews 80 Magnitude 80 and the DeVos family's Windquest - also broke the record.

Pyewacket, donated afterward by Disney to the Orange Coast College School of Sailing and Seamanship, probably won't be raced offshore, and besides Morning Glory there is only one other maxZ86 in existence - Windquest, an earlier version without canting keel technology. The state of the art has expanded to boats of 30 meters (98 feet) or more, all with canting keels.

Transpac Commodore Jerry Montgomery said that in determining the 2007 rating limit, "We will coordinate with other members of the Offshore Racing Association." Those would be the organizers of the Newport-Bermuda and Chicago-Mackinac races.

That said, the rating limit is of little concern to the large majority of entries. 68 of the 75 boats that raced this year - the second most ever - competed for other prizes on smaller boats in seven classes other than Division 1. All boats are eligible for the King Kalakaua Trophy for first overall on corrected handicap time, won by the Transpac 52s Alta Vita and Rosebud in the last two races.

Starting dates for Transpac 2007 have been set for July 9, 12 and 15, two days earlier than this year's sequence of July 11-17.

The fastest boats will start on Sunday, July 15, perhaps alongside Volvo 70s on their final leg of the proposed Volvo Pacific race. That race, visiting ports in the northern Pacific missed by the Volvo Ocean Race, is planned to start in Singapore, drop in on China and Japan and cross to North America for stops in Vancouver, B.C.; San Francisco and San Diego.

Aloha and probably Division 5 boats will start on Monday, July 9, followed by Division 3 and 4 boats Thursday, July 12.

Early nights will be dark for everyone until a new moon builds in the third week in July, and only the stragglers will see a full moon on July 26. Usually, organizers would schedule for a full moon along the way, but the moon phases for 2007 are such that starting earlier might find a less stable Pacific High and starting later would risk an impact from weather moving up from tropical storms in the south.

One competitor, Cal 40 skipper Wendy Siegal, said, "It will be all right. With all the overcast, the full moon was irrelevant this year."

Meanwhile Transpac is studying options, starting in 2007, to track competitors' positions by automatic transponders instead of daily radio reports, a system already in limited but successful use in other events.

The transponders typically send latitude and longitude positions of each boat to a shore location on a schedule predetermined by race organizers. Such frequency can be from continuous to once every several hours and would have a bearing on tactics if the information was then available to the fleet. Normally, in Transpac, competitors learn one another's positions by radio only once every 24 hours.

"The questions are," Vice Commodore Al Garnier said, "should we have transponders, should we delay [the information that is available to other competitors] and what should be our secondary reporting system should a transponder fail?"

An ad hoc committee of Transpac board members has been formed to review the issue and make recommendations.