Record 134 Boats in Long Beach Regatta

This year’s Transpac--the 36th biennial Transpacific Yacht Race to Hawaii--starts next week, and since blue-water sailing isn’t for everyone, there’s an attractive alternative off Long Beach this weekend.

The seventh annual Audi/North Sails Race Week starts with a race at 4 p.m. today, followed by two Saturday and one Sunday.

King Kalakaua thought up the Transpac in 1886, although nobody got around to doing it until 1906. The Audi/North event is the creation of Bruce Golison of Long Beach. It may be the best open event in the country not run by a yacht club, and better than most that are. Innovations include alternative time penalties or arbitration that have eliminated 85% of the usual tiresome and acrimonious protest hearings.

There will be a record 134 boats from 24 to 51 feet in seven classes. J-35s and Schock 35s will race level, boat for boat, the latter for their Pacific Coast championship. All others will race on the Performance Handicap Racing Fleet’s seconds-per-mile scale.

Converting to PHRF’s simpler system required some creative handicapping for some of the larger boats with International Offshore Rule or International Measurement System ratings. By the nature of their system, many IOR boats suffer in PHRF, so Golison created a “rating review board” to keep the competition fair and encourage entries, and especially to help older boats sailing with old handicaps.

Normally, that would lead to a dogfight, but Golison said: “You know who gave us the best input? The owners.”

The board included some boat owners, industry experts and a pair of local world-class sailors, Dave Ullman and Robbie Haines. They used past results and relative time data from the same boats’ performances in Long Beach Race Week two weeks ago.

For example, Lew Berry’s new Andrews 43, It’s OK, dominated IMS-A in that event, often overtaking IOR boats starting five minutes earlier, so it will carry an adjusted rating of 15--lowest in the event--this weekend.

Two other Long Beach class winners, Don Hughes’ Quintessence and Mike Wootten’s Allegiance, “both sacrificed time to boats around them,” Golison said. “They realize they have to get boats out, or their boats won’t have anybody to race against.”

One beneficiary is Clockwork Orange, an older boat owned by Bill Deardorff and Dexter Goodall, which wouldn’t have been competitive under its old handicap.

That’s why, aside from one-design fleets, sailing needs fair handicaps--so smaller or older boats can remain competitive if they are sailed well enough.

The Transpac has 42 entries in five classes. The smaller, slower IOR-C (3) and IMS-B (7) boats will start at 1 p.m. next Thursday off Pt. Fermin, followed 48 hours later by IOR-A (17), IOR-B (9) and IMS-A (6).

The finish will be off Diamond Head after 2,216 nautical miles. The record is 8 days 11 hours 1 minute 45 seconds, set in 1979 by Merlin, a 68-footer that was the forerunner of the ULDBs, or sleds, that dominate the West Coast’s offshore races now. The fastest anybody has sailed to Hawaii is 6:22:41:12--Rudy Choy’s Aikane X-5 catamaran in 1989, but cats have never been allowed in the Transpac.

Bill Lee, creator of the Santa Cruz 70s, built Merlin for himself for one purpose: To finish first in the Transpac, for the “barn door” prize. It has done so three times, once missing its record by 46 seconds.

Ordinarily, the “barn door” winner would be expected to come from IOR-A class, where the sleds compete. But Merlin, now owned by Donn Champion of Santa Cruz, has recently converted to IMS-A, with more generous allowances for modification. It has dropped 1,000 pounds of internal ballast while giving up insignificant sail area.

Bud Tretter, the Long Beach Marina Shipyard operator who has sailed in several Transpacs, said: “Merlin is in her fastest racing mode ever.”

Ragtime also has moved to IMS-A. The New Zealand-built 62-footer was first to finish in 1973 and ‘75, before Pat Farrah owned it.

Tretter said another boat to watch for--literally--is Pandemonium, the Nelson/Marek sled that lost its keel on the way back from Hawaii two years ago and has twice been reported drifting back toward the islands upside down. Calculating the currents, it was estimated that Pandemonium would arrive sometime in the next few weeks.

One late scratch was Mongoose, Paul Simonsen’s Santa Cruz 70 that was fourth to finish in 1989 but was recently damaged when it slipped off a transporter in a Santa Cruz boatyard, injuring a worker and crushing a sports car.

Simonsen instead will charter Mitchell Rouse’s sled, Taxi Dancer, third to finish in ‘89, behind Silver Bullet and Blondie, and the handicap winner overall.

Sailing Notes

MATCH RACING--Like the Congressional Cup off Long Beach in March, the Kouros Cup off St. Tropez, France, had an all-New Zealand championship sailoff, but Russell Coutts reversed the outcome by beating Chris Dickson, 2-1. Coutts won the last two races--the decider after Dickson jumped the gun and had to restart. Peter Isler of San Diego was third, beating France’s Thierry Pepponet, 2-0, after losing to Coutts, 2-0, in the semifinals. . . . Australia’s Bobby Wilmot will defend his Liberty Cup title in New York Harbor next Thursday through June 30. Rivals will include Italy’s Il Moro di Venezia America’s Cup skipper, Paul Cayard; Isler, and Isler’s wife J.J. Isler--a solid competitor in any field.

EVENTS--The National Championships for Tornados, the Olympic catamaran class, will be held at Alamitos Bay Yacht Club next Thursday through June 30. As many as 25 entries are expected, including the Pease and Jay Glaser and Pete Melvin/Chris Steinfeld teams, currently ranked 1-2 on the U.S. sailing team. . . . The Santa Monica Bay quarterfinals for the U.S. Women’s Sailing Championship will be run by Windjammers YC Saturday and Sunday in Martin 242s. . . . The third round of Pacific Corinthian YC’s Ventura County Ocean Racing Circuit is scheduled Saturday and Sunday. Boats race PHRF. All races start outside the Channel Islands breakwater. . . . Cabrillo Beach YC’s Texaco Starport event with one-design and PHRF classes is set for June 29-30. . . . The Baxter Bowl for Stars is scheduled July 6-7 at Newport Harbor YC.