Spirit Of Mystery At The Sydney Boat Show (Photo by Colin Merry)

Spirit of Mystery Crew Visit Walcon At The Sydney Boat Show (Photo by Colin Merry)

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Spirit of Mystery Crew Sails Sydney Harbor (Photo by Colin Merry)

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Collin Merry Sailing On Spirit of Mystery In Sydney Harbor (Photo courtesy of Colin Merry)

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Sydney Boat Show (Photo by Colin Merry)

Sydney Boat Show (Photo by Colin Merry)

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Inside The Boat Show (Photo by Colin Merry)

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Zac Sunderland on Intrepid (Photo courtesy Of ZacSunderland.com)

A 17-year-old Californian, Zac Sunderland piloted his battered sailboat into a Southern California harbour on Thursday to complete a gruelling 13-month voyage and become the youngest person to sail around the world solo.

The teen acknowledged the 27,500-mile voyage wasn’t easy. Pirates off the coast of Indonesia gave him quite a scare.  Zac recalled  the day “had a boat circle in and ended up calling in the coast watch and they chased them off but, yeah,  lucked out there! About an hour and a half of hell.”

Severe storms also were a problem, he said.

Sunderland’s Web site says he bought the boat with his own money. His parents had hoped he would find something that would spark a fire in him, a passion that would direct him away from all the negative and harmful influences that are so prevalent in society, but even they were stunned by the scope of his dreams and desires, it says.

Zac on Intrepid ( Photo courtesy of ZacSunderland.com)

He was 16 when he left Marina del Rey on June 14, 2008, aboard his boat, Intrepid. Solitude and exhaustion were just a couple of factors that faced him each day. “The hardest constantly was the tiredness,” he said. “I mean, you get over the loneliness, but tiredness, it’s an ongoing thing. Half the time I haven’t slept in 48 hours and it’s just hard to get enough rest.”

Sunderland said he made some good contacts along the way. “It’s interesting just thinking back to the different places in the world because I have so many friends in different parts of the world that are like family, you know, and all these different experiences,” he said.

It’s awesome to be back,” Sunderland, of Thousand Oaks, California, said after he was welcomed home by a flotilla of well-wishers.

Fewer than 250 people have sailed solo around the globe, with three times that many scaling the top of Mount Everest, according to the American Sailing Association, which certified Sunderland’s feat.

He left Marina Del Rey, just south of Los Angeles, on June 14, 2008, and celebrated his 17th birthday at sea while off Africa’s Cape of Good Hope.

Zac Up the Mast (Photo courtesy of LA Times Blogs.com)

His return was delayed near the end of his voyage when his single-masted boat sustained a broken bulkhead in rough seas off Mexico, forcing him to stop at Puerto Vallarta long enough for his father, Laurence, to fly in to make repairs.

The oldest of seven children, Sunderland was home-schooled and partly raised on a boat.

Zac Sunderland Aboard Intrepid (Photo Courtesy of Travelblog.bcaa)

He becomes the first person under 18 to circumnavigate the globe by sea alone, and the youngest to date. The previous record-holder was David Dicks of Australia, who completed his voyage in November 1996 at age 18.

Congratulations Zac!  

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Flash at the Start of Transpac 2009 (Photo courtesy of Transpac 2009)

Tom Akin had a lot to say about sailing Flash, a TP 52, to Hawaii.  His initial comments were, “I found out what is its like to be in a TP52 for seven days.  You sit in water, you eat in water, and you sleep in water.  It’s wet.  The beast is not as luxurious as my Santa Cruz 52.  I was looking for a creature comfort and couldn’t find one.”

Akin, his crew and Jeff Thorpe, Criminal Mischief’s navigator, worked non-stop over a very short period of time to get Flash into racing condition.  From the time the boat arrived in Long Beach, two weeks before the start, until the evening before they took off, the deck was strewn with rigging materials, sealants and tools.  The work that they did paid off.  With more than half of the Transpac fleet safely docked in Honolulu, Flash sits second in class and second in fleet.

Flash held the lead on corrected time for much of the race while Samba was “zigzagging all over the place,” said Paul Cayard.  “We were pleasantly surprised to be in the lead.  During the last two days, they got it sorted out and put on the afterburners and put 40 miles a day on us.”

Flash at the Dock (Photo courtesy of Transpac 2009)

Allie Cayard, the youngest and the only female on board said, “There was never a dull moment.  There was always something to be fixed.”  Allie sailed with her brother and father, Paul.  She also noted how calm it was dockside compared to out on the Pacific Ocean sailing the world’s most enduring and greatest ocean race

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Alpha Romeo (Photo Courtesy of Alpha Romeo.com.au)

Crichton, who lived in Hawaii for a period of time and sailed his first and only Transpacific Yacht Race prior to this one 30 years ago.  Crichton’s sailing program has changed considerably since 1979 when he raced in a 42-footer and finished eighth in a 22-boat fleet.  Crichton and his fleet of Alfa Romeo sailboats have taken line honors in 171 races.  Crichton’s wins include races considered the Holy Grail of offshore racing – the Fastnet and the Sydney Hobart.  Crichton looking forward to the Sydney Hobart Race said, “There will be six 100-footers in the race.  Five are certainly are capable of winning the race.”

Following the win when Team Manager, Murray Spence, was asked to elaborate on what it took to prepare the boat and team for the race, Crichton stole the microphone and responded, “Money.”  Everybody laughed and no one could argue.  Crichton said that he was very happy with the race.  “We had no mechanical problems: not one.”

Crichton’s team included Stan Honey, Ben Ainslie, Michael Coxon, David Endean, Ryan Godfrey, Stan Honey, Andrew Hutchinson, Phil Jameson, Lance Jenkins, Gavin McPherson, Peter Merrington, Murray Spence, Craig Sattherwaite, Joao Signorini, David Rolfe, Tony Mutter and Alfa’s shore crew, Ian Goldsworthy.

Honey, who has a 50% batting average when it comes to winning the Transpac.  He boosts his Transpac wins to 11 with Transpac 2009.  Among the Transpac records that Honey set are the fastest corrected time of any singlehanded sailor in a monohull (set in 1994 on Illusion, a Cal 40 and superseded), the fastest Transpac passage in a monohull of any singlehanded sailor; and the fastest passage in a monohull (set in 1999 on Pyewacket, a Santa Cruz 70, in 1999, also superseded.)  Honey has also been aboard fastest passage and fastest 24-hour runs in the Atlantic as a crew on ABNAmro One, a Juan K VOR 70 and Playstation, a Morrelli & Melvin catamaran.  Those records have been superseded.  Honey is on call with Franck Cammas and Groupama to go for a ’round the world record.

Honey’s comment on his Transpacific crossing aboard Alfa Romeo and the weather conditions that enabled the team to break the previously set 24-hour run record in the Transpac, established in 2005 by Morning Glory , was “We had steady winds.  We never had a slow spot.”  During Transpac 09, Alfa Romeo had a 399-mile day, a 423-mile day and a 393-mile day.

Transpac 09 was the first distance race in the open ocean that America’s Cup helmsman, Ben Ainslie, has sailed.  Ainslie got the team off to a roaring start when he nailed the pin at the start of the race on July 5 off of Point Fermi, the southernmost point in Los Angeles.

After the team received their leis and were chauffeured in vintage Alfa Romeo cars from a dock at  Aloha Tower, romantic island gateway for the steamships that delivered travelers to Hawaii in the early 20th century.Tom Garrett, Vice Commodore of the Transpacific Yacht Club welcomed the sailors by saying, “It’s one thing to beat a record, it’s another thing to obliterate it.” 

Mark Hazlett, the Chair of the 600-member Honolulu Committee from three clubs gave Crichton and his crew a genuine Hawaiian Aloha welcome when he said,”Welcome back to Waikiki Yacht Club.”  Crichton, who lived in Hawaii for a number of years was a member of the club.  Garrett introduced Crichton and the crew to the newly deeded Merlin Trophy and invited Crichton to visit Newport Beach for a formal presentation of the Clock Trophy.  The several hundred pound trophy permanently resides at the Newport Harbor Nautical Museum.

Following a press conference, the team and the well-wishers kicked off the first Hawaiian Aloha party of Transpac 09. Cades Schutte LLP and Jimmy Buffett’s Restaurant & Bar hosted the party at Waikiki Yacht Club.

Among the many trophies that Crichton’s Alfa Romeo team, also the top foreign entry in Transpac 09, will claim are:  The Merlin Trophy for the fastest elapsed time for the Unlimited Class of yachts competing in the Transpac Race. The Unlimited Class yachts are RSS 51 and 52 waiver yachts (exempt from the Racing Rules of Sailing limitations on movable ballast and/or stored power) up to 100 feet with the shortest elapsed time.  These boats are ineligible for the Barn Door Trophy. The trophy, built by Ken Gardiner, is a scale model of Merlin, the famed Bill Lee-designed 68-footer.  

Crichton will have the honor of setting back the Clock Trophy, or the Transpacific Yacht Club New Course Record trophy.  The Clock Trophy was donated by Roy E. Disney and is awarded to any monohull yacht that establishes a new elapsed time course record.  Tradition calls for the winner of the trophy to reset the clock to show the new course record. Hasso Plattner’s Morning Glory established the current course record of 6:16:04:11in 2005.  Unlimited Class yachts are eligible for the Merlin Trophy and the Clock Trophy, but are not eligible for the Barn Door Trophy.

The remaining 46 boats in the fleet are racing toward Hawaii and hoping to win elapsed time and corrected time honors within their divisions in addition to numerous other awards for completing and competing in the world’s most enduring and greatest ocean race.

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Division 3,4 and 5 Start Line July 2nd (Photo Courtesy of Transpac 2009)

Lynx, the heavy tall ship, has only chipped about 220 miles off of the vast 2,225-nautical mile journey. 

Gib Black’s thirty-year old Santa Cruz 52, Roy’s Chasch Mer is leading Division V and is just a few miles out in front of Passion.  Black and the crew discovered that their shaft strut had cracked wide open hours before our starting gun. They went through our limited parts and tool kits, found dive gear, parts and even machined some others to repair the problem.  Says Black, “(We have) a bit more drag at the prop now, but we are moving AND we made our start. Nice start at that.”

Estimated arrivals for the boats are anywhere from 14 days to 30 days.

Tachyon III, Kanzunori Komatu’s Santa Cruz 52, with members of the Japanese Olympic Sailing Team on board, led the parade out of the basin.   Like each of the 18 Transpac 09 race boats that followed, Tachyon III was escorted out of Rainbow Harbor’s entrance by paddlers from the Kahakai Canoe Club.  Free Range Chicken, Bruce Anderson’s deluxe Perry 59, was the final Transpac race boat to leave the pier.  As she streamed away from the dock, the crew showered their escorts with fresh fuschia-colored leis.  Long Beach added more pageantry to the send-off by having Navy seals sky dive from a blimp and splash down in between the end of the pier and the Queen Mary.

The 19-boat fleet of 45 to 60-foorters rushed the starting line.  They were amped up with anticipation and testosterone and shot out of the blocks on their way to Ala Wai and Transpac Row.  The pin was the coveted spot and Criminal Mischief, the grey-hulled boat with a crimson-shirted team roared past the pin.  Thinking that they were a bit too early, they bore away and returned to the line to exonerate themselves.  Just up off of their starboard hip was Wasabi, one of the Mexican entries, and Bengal 7, one of three Japanese entries.  Cipango, Relentless and Passion, all US boats, were just to weather of the pack at the pin.  The rest of the fleet was spread out evenly across the starting line all the way up to the committee boat.

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Transpac 2009 (Photo courtesy of Transpac 2009)

In Division 6, Relentless, the One-Design 35 being doublehanded by Tim Fuller and Erik Shampain, has a ten-mile lead over the crew on Narrow Escape.

After sailing through wind ranges of 8 to 15 knots immediately following Monday’s start and making a number of headsail changes, Divisions 6 and 7 Transpac crews went over the top of Catalina Island and settled into steadier conditions.  Relentless leads and is 2,100 nautical miles from the finish line off Diamond Head  and Lynx, the 114-ton tall ship, is finding difficult to get the momentum going. Lynx has 2,165 nautical miles left to go on the 2,225 nautical mile racecourse.

Alumni from the 2007 Transpac Morning Light crew are sprinkled throughout the 51-boat Transpac 09 fleet.  Two of them, Kate Theisen and Graham Brant-Zawadski are up for another once-in-a-lifetime experience during this Transpac.  They have joined the Lynx crew.  America’s Privateer, Lynx, a 122-foot square topsail schooner, travels 7,000 nautical miles each year to ports along the West Coast and Hawaii, serving as a living history museum and classroom for the study of early maritime history and its role in establishing America’s freedom, as well as earth, life and physical science.

Charisma, one of nine foreign yachts in this year’s Transpacific Yacht Race, is off to an early lead in Division 7. Alejandro Perez Calzada and his crew of 11 are racing this 57-foot Sparkman & Stephens design. Aside from one German, the entire Charisma crew is Spanish.  All crew members are sailing their first Transpac.  Their goal is to have a good time and have a respectable finish within their division.  

Between the Sheets, Ross Peralman’s, Jeanneau 50, which won the Aloha A division in the 2007 Transpac, is approximately 15 miles behind Charisma.  

Nineteen boats comprising Divisions 3,4 and 5 start on Thursday, July 2nd at 1300 off of Point Fermin.  Five Santa Cruz 50’s, including hull #1, Roy’s Chasch Mer, constitute Division 5.  Half of the boats in Division 4 are Santa Cruz 52’s.  Reinrag2, the overall winner on corrected time for the 2007 Transpac, is also in Division 4.  Division 3’s entries include two Japanese and one Mexican boat and Bruce Anderson’s comfortable and fast, Free Range Chicken.

With 44 races starting in 1906, the Transpacific Yacht Race to Hawaii is well into its second century as the longest of the two oldest ocean races in the world. The first race was the year of the great San Francisco earthquake, which literally altered the course of the event.

The race was inspired by King Kalakaua, the revered Hawaiian leader of the late 19th century who believed that such an event would strengthen the islands’ economic and cultural ties to the mainland. But it didn’t happen until Clarence MacFarlane, a Honolulu racing sailor, invited several contemporaries in San Francisco and Los Angeles to race to the Hawaiian Islands. The race was scheduled to start in the early summer of 1906, but when MacFarlane sailed his 48-foot schooner into San Francisco Bay he realized there would have to be a change of plans. The city lay in ruins following the great earthquake 27 days earlier.

But MacFarlane wasn’t easily discouraged. He simply changed the starting point to Los Angeles, and except for one nostalgic return to San Francisco for the start in 1939, the race has started in Southern California ever since. The starting line is now off the bluffs of Point Fermin in San Pedro at the southern edge of the City of Los Angeles. The finish is off the Diamond Head lighthouse just east of Honolulu, establishing a distance of 2,225 nautical miles.

The 2009 race will be the 45th Transpac. It has been sailed by 1,700 boats from 17 countries, including 124 foreign competitors. The race is run biennially in odd-numbered years, alternating with the Newport-to-Bermuda race that also started in 1906.

Fastest elapsed time (monohull): 6 days 16 hours 4 minutes 11 seconds, Morning Glory (Reichel/Pugh maxZ86 maxi sled), Hasso Plattner, Kiel, Germany,2005.

 Fastest elapsed time (multihull): 5 days 9 hours 18 minutes 26 seconds, Explorer (86-foot catamaran), Bruno Peyron, 1997.

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Challenge and Adventure Image Galleries of Newport Bucket Regatta by George Bekris

(click on image to view gallery) http://www.challengeandadventure.com/Newport_Bucket2009/ http://www.challengeandadventure.com/Newport_Bucket2008/ http://www.challengeandadventure.com/Newport_Bucket2006/ http://www.challengeandadventure.com/Newport_Bucket2005/ .

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OSTAR Competiors (Photo Courtesy of OSTAR 2009 uk)

OSTAR 2009   FINISHING TIMES
all times in UT   
Name                            Skipper                      Class      Finished at Elapsed Time Corrected Time
ELMARLEEN             Will Sayer                     E                17-Jun 13:00 23 01:30:00 19 22:46:39
TAMARIND               Mervyn Wheatley     J               16-Jun 17:17 22 05:47:00 20 10:00:47
JBELLINO                  Rob Craigie                PD                13-Jun 11:40 19 00:10:00 20 13:34:20
BRITISH                     Marco Nannini            J                16-Jun 11:14 21 23:44:30 20 16:04:37
DINAH                        Barry Hurley            GM               15-Jun 10:05 20 22:35:00 21 06:37:28
KING  OF SHAVES  Oscar Mead               GM               15-Jun 12:37 21 01:07:00 21 07:10:40
PURE SOLO                Hannah White           PD               14-Jun 11:52 20 00:22:00 21 15:16:34
LA PROMESSE          Jan Kees Lampe       PD               12-Jun 05:10 17 17:40:00 21 15:18:48
DE FRANSCHM        Bart Boosman              J                17-Jun 08:34 22 21:04:30 21 18:10:13
OLBIA                         Christian Chalandre  E                18-Jun 20:36 24 09:06:00 21 21:25:11
JAGER                        Dick Koopmans           J                 16-Jun 16:05 22 04:35:00 21 21:39:35
FANFAN!                   Uwe Rottgering       GM                16-Jun 10:12 21 22:42:00 22 06:36:01
VIJAYA                      Huib Swets                GM                16-Jun 11:57 22 00:27:30 22 07:19:41
SPINNING WHEEL  Roberto Westerman PD             13-Jun 14:44 19 03:14:00 23 09:10:59
QII                                 Jerry Freeman         PD               15-Jun 14:19 21 02:49:00 23 16:08:29
CAZENOVE CAPITAL Pip                           GM               18-Jun 04:35 23 17:05:00 23 17:39:08
BLUQUBE                    Katie Miller               PD               16-Jun 06:33 21 19:03:00 23 19:10:14
BANJAARD               John Falla                      J                19-Jun 06:25 24 18:55:00 23 20:54:17
FLAMINGO LADY        Michael Collin        E                21-Jun 17:01 27 05:31:00 24 10:51:28
IN DIREZIONE OSTINATA E  Luca Zoccoli P           15-Jun 10:09 20 22:39:35 26 11:51:52
SUOMI KUDU                 Peter Crowther      J                 23-Jun 13:45 29 02:15:00 27 07:39:24
JEMIMA NICHOLAS    Andrew Petty        J                 23-Jun 03:37 28 16:07:00 27 13:58:05

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