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Philippe Kahn's Pegasus 101 just outside of doublehanded Transpac record

A glance at a chart suggests that the Transpacific Yacht Race is a straightforward matter: pass Santa Catalina Island just offshore and head straight for Hawaii. There's nothing in the way but ocean.

In truth, success swings on a series of critical decisions, and the 44th running of the 2,225-nautical mile classic was that in spades. Those who made the best decisions were to receive their awards Friday night during a banquet at the Hilton Hawaiian Village. Alas, a few others will still be at sea, but that's the kind of race it's been: slow and tricky.

The final winner was Cirrus, a 34-year-old Standfast 40 in Aloha B class that finished late Thursday night after 17 days 22 hours 18 minutes 54 seconds, a long time for any boat in a Transpac.

Cirrus was sailed by a Hawaiian crew of five women and owner Bill Myers, who appointed Lindsey Austin, 21, the youngest of them, to be skipper. The others were Austin's mom, Donna; Caroline Heinrich, Nancy Piper and Christin Shacat. Putting Austin in charge wasn't just a sympathetic gesture after Austin missed the final cut for the Morning Light team, and his confidence in her was validated throughout the race. She made the calls.

Austin said at the dock: "We kind of came into this as an underdog. Ulli [Ulli Steiner, Myers' fellow nuclear physicist in Germany and longtime friend] wrote a weather tracking program for us. A couple of days into the race the program said to go south for 2½ days. I didn't think that was the thing to do and we talked about it for a full day. Finally, I decided to go south as the program said, but for only 1½ days. We weren't sure if that was the right thing to do but... Oh! Let me tell you how we found out it was the right move!

"Early one morning Bill was listening to the headphones of the morning reports and he accidentally left the speaker on, so we all could hear everyone's position reports. When they came to Aloha B, we all heard 'Cirrus in position one.' We went crazy! We couldn't believe it. From that point on, since we had worked so hard to get in first place, we decided to do whatever we could do to stay there."

Myers said: "Just before we crossed the line, Lindsey said, 'I'm not crossing the line without a spinnaker.' So we turned down, brought out a brand new spinnaker we were saving for the finish and surfed across the line. I think that was the most speed we had the whole race."

Myers also commented on the boat's "noise level. I've always been on these races with guys, and they're usually stuffy. These ladies were upbeat and laughing most of the way across. Every one of them are members of WYRA [Women's Yacht Racing Association based in Honolulu] and they made me an honorary member."

The Minnow, a Catana 52 catamaran sailed by brothers Bob and Mike Webster of Pryor, OK, had a different kind of navigational decision to make. As Mike Webster explained: "We were sailing toward the finish, had the GPS self-steering on, playing our Souzas on deck for crossing the finish line, just like I did when we started the race, when I asked Bob, 'Hey, which side of the buoy are we supposed to be on?' Bob didn't know, and I sure didn't, so we checked the GPS on the boat's self-steering. It showed a track right over the top of it. I said, 'Well, that can't be good,' so we took it off self-steering and crossed on the left of the buoy."

Mike then asked a reporter, "That was right, right?"

It was. Boats must finish outside the buoy on a line extending seaward from the Diamond Head lighthouse, which is on all the sailors' minds.



"This is an awesome ride toward the lighthouse," Philippe Kahn wrote from Pegasus 101 before finishing Thursday. "We hooked onto a massive squall monster, saw 32 knots of wind and sustained 18 knots of boat speed for the longest time. [Our keel is] fully canted, water ballast in the back and all the weight that we can find in the boat stacked astern."

Later: "For the final hours of the race we saw up to 36 knots of wind and sustained 20 knots of boat speed easily . . . these [Open 50] boats plane so easily. We jibed at the tip of Molokai in one of those extraordinary moments when the whole universe seems to be in focus, and we pulled it off."

But it wasn't a year for records, for Pyewacket or Pegasus 101. The doublehanded mark is 10 days 4 hours 4 minutes 19 seconds by Howard Gordon and Jay Crum in 2001. Kahn and Richard Clarke missed it by about 20 hours.

Nevertheless, Kahn said, "It was awesome, the boat was awesome, the whole team was awesome, and Richard fantastic. Things don't get much better than this. The wind and the weather were strange this year. The sailing was stunning: bright moon with Jupiter right at its side and massive Pacific Ocean rollers. You can understand why the sport of surfing was first conceived in Hawaii...the sport of the great Polynesian kings and navigators."

Meanwhile, the water problems on Locomotion, Ed Feo's Andrews 45 from Long Beach, appeared to be of less concern as the wind increased to rush them toward a finish Friday afternoon.

"We're currently surfing down huge waves, gliding east toward the Kaiwi (a.k.a. 'Molokai' channel) in the final sprint to the finish!" the boat's blog reported. "Had a spectacular night with solid 20-22 K breezes, no squalls and great moonlight to enable the surfing action. As far as our water situation goes, we are going to make it with zero reserves, finally finishing the emergency water somewhere in the channel."

Fred Detwiler's Transpac 52 Trader from Ft Lauderdale, FL finished early Friday morning while dealing with a problem of loose keel bolts at the finish line.

Transpac 2007 standings - (positions at 6 a.m. PDT Friday)
In order of corrected handicap time (place in total fleet in parentheses).
All times by days:hours:minutes:seconds.
ORR rating allowances in parentheses; subtract time allowance from actual final elapsed time to determine corrected handicap time.

Division 1 (Started July 15)
1. Magnitude 80 (Andrews 80), Doug Baker, Long Beach, Calif. (00:4:32:33), elapsed time 7:19:08:10; corrected time 7:14:35:37 (13th in fleet).
2. Pyewacket (Reichel/Pugh 90), Roy E. Disney, Burbank, Calif. (minus-00:21:09:13), ET 7:01:11:56; CT 7:22:21:09 (17).
3. Rosebud (STP 65), Roger Sturgeon, Fort Lauderdale, Fla. (1:04:09:36), ET 9:15:35:32; CT 8:09:25:46 (19).
4. Peligroso (Kernan 70), Mike Campbell/Dale Williams, Long Beach (1:05:17:12), ET 9:16:40:48; CT 8:11:23:36 (23).
5. Medicine Man (Andrews 63), Bob Lane, Long Beach (1:07:02:37), ET 10:02:40:39, CR 8:19:38:02 (32).

Division 2 (Started July 15)
1. Samba Pa Ti (Transpac 52), John Kilroy Jr., Los Angeles (2:04:02:17), ET 10:15:565:55, CT 8:11:54:38 (24).
2. Holua (Santa Cruz 70), Brack Duker, Pasadena, Calif. (2:08:51:12), ET 10:03:10:00; CT 8:12:18:48 (26).
3. Morning Light (Transpac 52), Jeremy Wilmot, Honolulu (2:05:27:19), ET 10:20:09:13, CT 8:14:41:54 (28).
4. Skylark (Santa Cruz 70), Doug Ayres, Newport Beach, Calif. (2:06:24:05), ET 10:22:13:44, CT 8:15:49:39 (29).
5. Hugo Boss (Volvo 60), Andy Tourell, Gosport, UK (1:23:10:32), ET 10:16:59:05, CT 8:17:48:33 (31).
6. Westerly (Santa Cruz 70), Thomas and Timothy Hogan, Newport Beach (2:06:06:45), ET 11:03:00:27, CT 8:20:53:42 (35).
7. DH-Pegasus 101 (Open 50), Philippe Kahn/Richard Clarke, Honolulu (2:00:47:54), ET 11:00:26:56, CT 8:23:39:02 (37).
8. Lucky (Transpac 52), Bryon Ehrhart, Chicago (2:05:26:28), ET 11:10:38:40, CT 9:05:12:12 (41).
9. Trader (Transpac 52), Fred Detwiler, Pompano Beach, Fla. (2:09:31:32), ET 11:18:29:22, CT 9:08:57:50 (44).

Division 3 (Started July 15)
1. Denali (Nelson/Marek 70), William McKinley, Grosse Pointe, Mich. (2:13:37:33), ET 10:23:20:01, CT 8:09:26:58 (20).
2. Pendragon IV (Davidson 52), John MacLaurin, Encino, Calif. (2:19:54:52), ET 11:07:57:47, CT 8:12:02:55 (25).
3. It's OK (Andrews 50), Tres Gordo Sailing, Glendora, Calif. (2:14:25:31), ET 11:04:26:57, CT 8:14:01:26 (27).
4. Ragtime (Spencer 65), Chris Welsh, Newport Beach (2:23:51:49), ET 11:19:30:48, CT 8:19:38:59 (33).
5. Cheetah (ULDB 70), Chris Slagerman, Los Angeles (2:18:18:28), ET 11:22:36:00, CT 9:04:17:32 (40).
6. Locomotion (Andrews 45), Ed Feo, Long Beach (3:03:56:13), 127.
7. Bengal 7 (Ohashi 46), Yoshihiko Murase, Nagoya, Japan (3:03:43:16), 146.
8. Yumehyotan (Nelson/Marek 68), Yasuo Sano, Osaka, Japan (2:22:57:25), NO REPORT.

Division 4 (Started July 12)
1. Reinrag2 (J/125), Tom Garnier, Wilsonville, Ore. (3:22:20:02), ET 9:21:51:35, CT 9:13:31:33 (first in fleet).
2. Cipango (Andrews 56), Bob & Rob Barton, Santa Rosa, Calif. (3:16:51:29), ET 9:22:18:03, CT 6:19:26:34 (2).
3. Verizon Wireless (ex-Stealth Chicken; Perry 56), Timothy Beatty, Rancho Santa Fe, Calif. (3:08:33:34), ET 10:18:49:23; CT 7:10:15:49 (10).
4. Ruahatú (Concordia 47), Ricardo Brockmann, Acapulco, Mexico (3:23:58:37), ET 11:16:05:33; CT 7:16:06:56 (16).
5. Raincloud (J/48), Lorenzo Berho Corona, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico (3:22:26:21), ET 12:19:07:24, CT 8:20:41:03 (34).
6. Bolt (Nelson/Marek 55), Craig Reynolds, Newport Beach (4:00:24:09), ET 13:13:31:409; CT 9:11:07:31 (45).
RETIRED ---Lucky Dog (J/125), Colin Shanner, San Diego (3:21:37:33).
RETIRED---Delicate Balance (Andrews 56), DBB Transpac LLC, San Rafael, Calif. (3:20:58:21).

Division 50/52 (Started July 12)
1. Kokopelli 2 (Santa Cruz 52), S.A. (Chip) Megeath, Tiburon, Calif. (3:03:55:25), ET 10:02:53:16, CT 6:22:58:21 (3).
2. Horizon (Santa Cruz 50), Jack Taylor, Dana Point, Calif. (4:00:14:46), ET 11:02:01:10; CT 7:01:46:24 (4).
3. Tachyon III (Santa Cruz 52), Kazumasa Nishioka, Tokyo (3:18:57:36), ET 10:20:49:36; CT 7:03:52:00 (5).
4. Passion (Santa Cruz 50), Steve Hastings, Corpus Christi, Tex. (3:20:35:39), ET 11:01:12:36; CT 7:04:36:57 (6).
5. Fortaleza (Santa Cruz 50), Jim Morgan, Long Beach (4:00:12:42), ET 11:05:54:19; CT 7:05:41:37 (7).
6. Hula Girl (Santa Cruz 50T), Beau Gayner, Newport Beach (3:17:23:38), ET 11:02:33:23; CT 7:09:09:45 (9).
7. Stags' Leap Winery (ex-Chasch Mer; Santa Cruz 50), Gib Black, Honolulu (4:05:22:35), ET 11:17:40:45; CT 7:12:18:10 (12).
8. Adrenalin (Santa Cruz 50), David Clark, Newport Beach (3:19:43:59), ET 8:16:02:46, CT 9:00:18:47 (38).
9. Relentless (Santa Cruz 52), Will Durant/Rick Brizendine, Long Beach (3:16:42:19), ET 13:04:34:32, CT 10:03:52:13 (51).

Division 5 (Started July 12)
1. Rancho Deluxe (Swan 45), Mike Diepenbrock, Sacramento, Calif. (4:10:34:37), ET 11:17:03:14; CT 7:04:28:37 (8).
2. Tower (Lidgard 45), Doug Grant, San Pedro, Calif. (4:10:51:22), ET 11:21:14:41, CT 7:10:23:19 (11).
3. On the Edge of Destiny (1D35), Sean Doyle, Kailua, H.I. (5:00:05:40), ET 12:15:11:55, CT 7:15:06:15 (14).
4. Paddy Wagon (Ross 40), Richard Mainland, Los Angeles (4:15:58:16), ET 12:07:25:55, CT 7:15:27:39 (15).
5. Recidivist (Schumacher 39), Ken Olcott, Los Altos, Calif. (5:09:17:24), ET 13:13:18:53, CT 8:02:01:29 (18).
6. Tabasco (1D35), Gary Fanger, San Francisco (5:02:01:10), ET 14:01:34:05, CT 8:23:32:55 (36).
7. DH-Tango (J/133), Michael Abraham/Phillip Rowe, Newport Beach (4:19:58:16), ET 14:00:03:33, CT 9:04:35:36 (40).
8. DH-Narrow Escape (Fast 40), Allen Lehman Sr. and Jr., Payson, Ariz. (4:20:59:25), ET 14:02:37:49, CT 9:05:38:24 (43).
9. Uncontrollable Urge (Columbia 30), James/Chris Gilmore, Carlsbad, Calif. (4:23:42:31), 192.

Division 6 (Started July 9)
1. Psyche (Cal 40), Steve Calhoun, Palos Verdes Estates, Calif. (7:03:57:50), ET 15:13:39:44; CT 8:09:41:54 (21).
2. Far Far (Cal 40), Don Grind, Placerville, Calif. (7:02:47:32), ET 15:12:44:58; CT 8:09:57:26 (22).
3. Peregrine (Hobie 33), Simon Garland, San Diego (5:21:13:46), ET 14:14:58:56; CT 8:17:14:13 (30).
4. DH-Brilliant (J/100), Tim Fuller/Erik Shampain, Murrieta, Calif. (5:21:44:43), ET 15:08:50:10, CT 9:11:36:24 (46).
5. Inspired Environments (Beneteau First 40.7), Timothy Ballard, Sausalito, Calif. (5:20:14:31), ET 15:07:59:27; CT 9:11:44:56 (47).
6. Brown Sugar (Express 37), Steve Brown, Santa Ana, Calif. (6:03:41:56), ET 16:00:16:01, CT 9:20:34:05 (50).
7. California Girl (Cal 40), Don and Betty Lessley, Novato, Calif. (7:01:16:11), ET 17:07:42:04, CT 10:06:25:53 (52).
8. DH-X Dream (X-119), Steen Moller/Bob MacDonald, Point Richmond, Calif. (5:12:37:00), ET 15:19:10:39; CT 10:06:33:39 (53).
9. Shanti (Olson 911S), Jon Eberly, Greenbrae, Calif. (7:17:47:09), 66.

Aloha A (Started July 9)
1. Between the Sheets (Jeanneau 52), Ross Pearlman, Marina del Rey (5:12:56:15), ET 14:16:00:06; CT 9:01:03:51 (39).
2. Ariadne (Ladd 73), Frank Easterbrook, Newport Beach (4:08:39:09), finished; 14:00:13:11; CT 9:05:34:02 (42).
3. French Kiss (Beneteau 50), Bryan Daniels, Alamo, Calif. (5:11:59:45), ET 15:03:07:31; CT 9:15:07:46 (48).
4. Windswept (Sean 57), Maxwell Phelps, Jamul, Calif. (5:06:21:29), ET 15:00:39:08, CT 9:18:17:39 (49).
5. Enchilado (Jeanneau 54), Cesar de Saracho, Tucson, Ariz. (4:23:43:58), ET 17:04:01:15, CT 12:04:17:17 (55).
6. Ho'okolohe (Farr 58), Alyson and Cecil Rossi, Novato, Calif. (4:10:58:57), ET 17:09:01:22, CT 12:22:02:25 (56).
7. Alsumar (S&S 70), Bill and Ted Davis, Las Vegas, Nev. (4:22:27:48), 341.
8. Anna Katarina (First 47.7), John Otterson, La Jolla, Calif. (5:08:31:43), RETIRED.

Aloha B (Started July 9)
1. Cirrus (Standfast 40), William D. Myers, Honolulu (7:02:14:16), ET 17:12:18:54, CT 10:10:04:38, (54).
2. Lady Liberty (Catalina 36), John Wallner, Calabasas, Calif. (8:12:05:44), 276.
3. Traveler (North Wind 47), Michael Lawler, Newport Beach (6:14:37:49), NO REPORT.
4. Mysteré (Swan 42), Jorge Morales, Dana Point, Calif. (6:12:14:02), NO REPORT.
RETIRED---Ginny (Calkins 50), Chris Calkins/Norm Reynolds, Encinitas, Calif. (5:18:26:52).
RETIRED--Gaviota (Cal 2-46), Jim Partridge, Pasadena, Calif. (6:20:18:32).
.
DH-Doublehanded.

Multihull
LoeReal (Jeanneau 60 trimaran), H.L. Enloe, El Paso, Tex. (Started July 15), ET 8:13:37:12; CT 8:13:37:12.
The Minnow (Catana 52 catamaran), Bob and Mike Webster, Pryor, Okla. (Started July 12), ET 14:08:53:00, CT 9:09:24:40.