(07-19-2007) - (July 18, 2007) Yesterday's rock stars are today's washouts in a Transpacific Yacht Race full of baffling twists and turns en route to Hawaii. Just as Roger Sturgeon's new STP 65 Rosebud appeared to be lining up on Roy E. Disney's Pyewacket with a 297-nautical mile 24-hour run down south a day earlier, dying wind slowed it to only 167 miles before Wednesday's 8 a.m. roll call. Philippe Kahn's Pegasus 101 was another classic example of how quickly it can change. His doublehanded Open 50, rated as the sixth fastest boat in the fleet, led Tuesday with a run of 299 miles in the south but Wednesday made only 146 miles---one less than Bill Myers' Cirrus, a 34-year-old Standfast 40 leading the Aloha B division with Lindsey Austin, 22, as skipper and four other women as crew.
The south was still good for Cirrus and a few others. Tom Garnier's Reinrag2, a J/125 in Division 4 that at one time was the farthest boat south of all, tied into breeze that swept it 232 miles---second only for the day to Mag 80's 237 and Fred Detwiler's 233 on the TP 52 Trader ---and into first place overall on corrected handicap time for the entire fleet. Unless the winds increase dramatically, Pyewacket's hopes of reclaiming the elapsed time record of 6 days 16 hours 4 minutes 11 seconds set by Morning Glory two years ago are slim.
Flagship's tracking program---introduced to Transpac for this 44th race---also ran into difficulties. The transponders it placed on all the boats were going dead after about five days, meaning that all of the earlier starters were not transmitting their periodic positions to satellites, and the big boats that started last were feared to follow suit. Transpac has returned to its old system of an 8 a.m. PDT daily radio roll call to the boats for position reports.
-- Read on for the complete update, which include blog reports from The Minnow (Bob Webster), Locomotion (Ed Feo), Psyche (Steve Calhoun), and Tango (Phil Rowe): http://www.transpacificyc.org/07/news/tp07-press-rel-34.html
-- Latest positions: http://www.transpacificyc.org/07/tables/tp07-pr-d7.html
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