Mike Perham Self Portrait Onboard Totallymoney.com (Photo by Mike Perham / Totallymoney.com)
Mike Perham is 600 miles south-east of Newfoundland, doing 11.4 kts. He has 1,520 nautical miles to the
Ushant/Falmouth finish line.
Light winds last week delayed 17 year-old Mike Perham’s record bid to become the youngest solo circumnavigator. He now expects to reach the Lizard line marking the start and finish point of his 30,000 mile record-setting odyssey sometime on Thursday August 27, still two months inside the current record. He now plans return to Gunwharf Quay, Portsmouth to be reunited with family and friends at 11:00am on Saturday August 29. Mike, who set out from England last November, was 600 miles south-east of Newfoundland early today, his yacht Totallymoney.com speeding on at 11.4knots, after closing to within 2,000 miles of the finish early on Monday.
Mike said on BBC Radio Solent today that he was coping well with being on his own, but is really looking forward to getting home.
Yesterday about 50 dolphins and 6 pilot whales came to visit him. Mike reported: “I was standing up by the mast this afternoon checking a few things and snapping photographs when all of a sudden I heard a great splash. There was this great long line of dolphins all jumping up in the air. There must have been fifty of them. It was an amazing sight! Later, I glanced across the water and spotted six pilot whales having a good look at Totallymoney.com.
Mike Perham on His Open 50 Totallymoney.com (Photo courtesy of Totallymoney.com)
Then, while I was sitting on the beanbag, two dolphins suddenly jumped up just a metre away from Totallymoney.com’s stern. They looked really impressive, spray flying everywhere. I guess the sealife around here is used to seeing a lot of yachts! The temperature on board is getting cooler with the influence of the Labrador Current from the north. The winds have gone around to the north as well. Today I had to put my sea boots on; a strange feeling since I have not worn anything on my feet for ages.
A small low-pressure system currently over Newfoundland, should give me some great running conditions by Wednesday. Once this has passed over it looks as if I might be able to hook into one of the big bad-boy low’s trucking it’s way across the Atlantic to the north of us. I’m looking forward to some more “vroom-vroom” moments!”
Mike Perham on Totallymoney.com (Photo by Julien Girardot/DPPI)
Mike Perham, the teenager from Potters Bar, Hertfordshire who has high hopes of sailing into the record books at the end of August to become the youngest person to circumnavigate the Globe alone, has covered more than 1,000 miles during his first week and is now off the Florida coast.
He and his Open 50 yacht Totallymoney.com left Panama last Tuesday, but says he has not been able to sleep for more than two hours a day, sometimes down to one and never longer than 15 minutes at a time. This is because he has to stay alert for fear of being run down by one of the many ships that are following the same route between Panama and the East Coast of the US. At times he has reported over 20 ships on his radar. On Sunday Mike said in his blog, ‘The main thing is to be safe. The traffic has picked up a lot this evening – in the last hour I’ve had three ships pass within a few miles.’
Mike has also found the extreme heat particularly uncomfortable. He reports, ‘It’s so, so hot inside that the last thing I want to do at the moment is sit at the chart table. it’s over forty degrees Celsius day and night.’ Often he has no choice but to be in the cabin as he has had to navigate around the Miskito and Rosalind Banks that stick out from the coast of Nicaragua and Honduras. On rounding the western tip of Cuba over the weekend there was a traffic separation scheme to be negotiated.
Mike is having to use all his navigation skills, working the currents and sometimes fickle winds to pass through this area. His decision to go through the Panama Canal instead of around Cape Horn is proving far more of a challenge than was first perceived.
Another weather phenomenon he has had to contend with are the powerful lightening storms. On Monday he wrote, ‘Today was a day of squalls and some of the craziest forked lightning I’ve seen so far – a bolt hit the water less than a mile away from me as I rounded the western tip of Cuba. Slightly worrying when I’m the tallest thing around!’
Another concern are pirates which are known to operate in this area. Mike is on an increased state of alert and his web tracker, showing the world Totallymoney.com course, has been suspended until he is clear of the region
If the wind gods remain kind, the 17 year old circumnavigator now expects to cross the Ushant/Lizard finish line off Falmouth UK in 21 days time and hopes to return to Gunwharf Quay, Portsmouth on August 25/26
Totallymoney (Photo courtesy of Totallymoney.com)
17 year old British sailor Mike Perham set out from Panama tlast night on the final stage of his record attempt to become the youngest solo yachtsman to take on the world. Sailing the Open 50 race yacht TotallyMoney.com. Mike set out on this extraordinary odyssey from Gunwharf Quay Portsmouth, England on November 15, 2008 and now expects to make a triumphant return within four weeks.
Mike from Potters Bar, Hertfordshire, first hit the headlines two years ago when he became the youngest person ever to sail across the Atlantic single-handed at the age of just fourteen – a record recognised by the Guinness Book of Records.
The Guinness encyclopaedia of record facts and feats is monitoring Mike’s progress once more. Earlier this month, American teenager Zac Sunderland returned to Los Angeles to claim the youngest solo circumnavigation record, but Mike is three and a half months younger and has until mid November to get his name into the record books. Mike Broughton, the British weather guru, who has been advising Perham throughout his record attempt, forecasts a 29 day voyage back to Portsmouth to give the 17 year old more than 2 months to spare.
During Mike’s circumnavigation, which is sponsored by TotallyMoney.com , Vocalink, Skechers Footwear, Mastervolt, Kemp Sails and many other companies, he has overcome everything nature can throw at him including storm force winds and 50ft seas. He has also had to overcome major problems with his yacht’s self-steering system, rudder bearings and electrics. Stopping for repairs added months to the voyage and led to Mike missing the seasonal weather window for rounding Cape Horn. Continued bad weather in the Southern Ocean, which had Totallymoney.com surfing down waves at crazy speeds up to 28knots, eventually forced the teenager to sail much further north than he had intended and sensibly, he re routed his return to the Atlantic via the Panama Canal.
Mike’s daily blogs and videos have been an inspiration to thousands who read and watch them each day. Mixing picturesque sunsets with ferocious seas, he describes with remarkable insight, his encounters with whales and dolphins, – and contrasting rubbish that litter the sea. Mike said today: “I’m finally on the last leg and it feels just great. I only have about 5,000 miles to go, so I am hoping to be home inside four weeks. I really can’t wait, but I won’t push the boat too hard, as I would not want anything to happen that might have been preventable.“
Money raised by Mike during the 28,000-mile voyage is being donated to Save the Children and the Tall Ships Youth Trust.
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
Pegasus 50 At Sea (Photo courtesy of Pegasus)
The record for double-handing the Transpacific Yacht Race from Los Angeles to Honolulu has been broken. At 4:38:35 am HST today, Philippe Kahn and Mark “Crusty” Christensen, crossed the Diamond Head finish line in the Open 50, Pegasus 50, in a record time of 7 days, 19 hours, 38 minutes and 35 seconds. They shaved over two and a half days off of the previous record set by Howard Gordon and Jay Crum in 2001 also with an Open 50, Etranger in the most enduring and greatest ocean race in the world covering 2,225 nautical miles from Los Angeles to Honolulu.
It seemed unusual to be taking photos of Kahn and Christensen as they backed Pegasus 50 into the slip at Waikiki Yacht Club after having spent days viewing their blog. They used their Motion X GPS application for their iPhone to get instantaneous performance feedback and to communicate to the rest of the world and share their story with AV blog postings.
“Double-handing the Open 50 to Hawaii is one of the highlights of my year,” stated Kahn, a noted technologist and the creator of the camera phone. “I love being out in the open Ocean, once we’re out there, that’s all that matters – we had our sights on the record and we beat it. Mark and I are a perfect team. We work together at MotionX and we race together as partners on Pegasus across the Pacific. Mark’s experience as one of the greatest offshore sailors in the world is invaluable. Transpac is a navigator’s race and that plays into our strength ”
Today is a busy day in Honolulu for welcoming parties. A staggered start, weather patterns and tactical decisions combined so that boats are streaming into Ala Wai in Honolulu and the greeting parties can barely keep up with the pace. Aloha welcome parties overlap. The consensus among the sailors is that it was a fun and fast race.
Boats in port – Alfa Romeo, Criminal Mischief, Magnitude 80, Bengal 7, Relentless, Samba Pa Ti, Akela, Hula Bad Pak, Medicine Man, Flash, Tachyon III. Pegasus 50, Cipango, OEX due in shortly. By the end of the day, most of the fleet have made their final gybe, crossed the finish line and will be wearing leis and telling the story of their race to family, friends and fellow sailors.
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.
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.
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.
