Top spot remains grand for Illusion

NEWPORT BEACH — Grand Illusion, the 70-foot boat that took the top spot after Friday’s races, held on to its prize position in the First Team Real Estate Invitational Regatta for the Hoag Cup despite a rough day of sailing Saturday.

Spectator boats, which included those primed to watch the second leg of the regatta, filled the water off the coast of Newport Beach. They watched Grand Illusion get off to a rocky start, when it prematurely crossed the starting line in the first race.

The crew typified the sailing Saturday, as they lost time because they had to turn around to re-cross the starting line, but the troubles for Grand Illusion didn’t stop there.

Rounding the leeward mark on the first lap, the crew dropped the spinnaker in the water — a mistake known as shrimping — and struggled to get it back on deck for repacking. Grand Illusion finished third in that race, behind Chayah and Halua, and would have been further behind if not for a favorable wind shift, said skipper Patrick O’Brien.

“We had a problem trying to get the jib up and we couldn’t get up in time,” O’Brien said. “We changed jobs at the last minute, and it made it tough for the guys in the front to get the jib up. Then we overshot the mark, and we got the spinnaker in the water.”

However, the boat took second in Saturday’s second race, and the finishes were strong enough to hold on to first place overall, according to handicap time.

Holua is in second place overall, and Westerly is in third after winning Saturday’s second race, based on handicap time. Westerly is the top local boat at this point. Tim and Tom Hogan of Newport Beach have their boat in contention.

Today’s final race begins at 1 p.m. and will determine the winner of the Hoag Cup.

“[Saturday] wasn’t one of our best days, but we’re still in first place, so I guess it could have been worse,” O’Brien said. “It’ll be a tough day [today], trying to keep ahead of everybody. We had a hard day.”

TWEAKING FOR ROSEBUD

Rosebud, the newest boat in the Hoag Cup regatta, is so young the boat only touched water for the first time May 28, but it’s been getting rave reviews from tactician Kevin Miller, save for one not-so-small problem: the hydraulics.

Rosebud is a 65-foot A-Class boat, one of the largest in the Hoag Cup regatta, its debut race. Big boats have big sails, and big sails require hydraulics, which assist the crew with the tremendous strength it takes to trim the sails.

Friday, the crew had limited use of the hydraulics, and by the second race of Saturday afternoon, they weren’t working at all, which means the crew was trimming the sails on sheer manpower, which limits what they can do.

“In your car, it would be like having first and fifth in your transmission and not having anything in between,” Miller said. “It makes it very difficult to get around a course.”

However, Miller explained the hydraulic problems as “new boat bugs” that will be fixed before the crew races Rosebud in the Transpac.

“The systems need time to sort out all of the bugs,” Miller said. “In our case, we had a number of problems from the get go, and we knew we were going to have these problems going into the regatta.”

The hope is to fit in another race before Transpac, but parts for the hydraulics must be ordered from Italy, and then installed.

Regattas like this one are good for finding weaknesses because an inoperable hydraulic system is not a problem anyone wants to have 1,000 miles from land, Miller said.

But a new boat doesn’t just mean new bugs, it also means new technology. Rosebud’s wow factor is in its lifting keel, which goes 16 feet deep, about five feet deeper than the other keels in the regatta.

Normally, a keel that deep wouldn’t fit into most harbors. The new technology allows the crew to lift the keel, and allowing access to many more harbors.

Most boats, Miller said, “are bound by the limits of the harbors in which they sail.” Rosebud is not.

“It takes six months to get the full potential of the boat,” Miller said. “So based on what we’ve seen so far we couldn’t be happier.”

RAGTIME GETS FACELIFT

When Chris Welsh and his two partners bought legendary racing vessel Ragtime two and a half years ago at auction, the 42-year old boat was in decent condition but there were a lot of things that needed to be upgraded.

They’ve reconfigured the keel, installed a new rudder, mast, and sails, after paying $20,000 more for the boat than they’d budgeted.

“That was complete insanity,” Welsh said. “We looked at it and thought that might be a great opportunity to get a boat with a lot of history.” The group’s final bid of $120,000 was the winner for Ragtime, but going over budget at auction was only the beginning.

After all, owning a boat, Welsh said, is more expensive than buying one.

The group has been trying to get the boat ready for this year’s Transpacific Yacht Race, which begins in July. Just last week, they had nearly 1,000 pounds shaved off the keel, the big piece of lead on the bottom of a boat which allows for control and stability.

It took five days of shaving, bit by bit, with electric door planers to achieve the lighter-weight keel.

“They took off 978 pounds, one little chip at a time,” Welsh said. The new keel hasn’t even been painted yet, and if you kneel over, you can see the silvery color of the lead beneath the boat.

Ragtime, the oldest boat in the First Team Real Estate Regatta for the Hoag Cup, was built in 1965 in New Zealand, and it’s one of the few big racing sailboats left constructed from wood.

Ragtime and six other boats from Newport Harbor Yacht Club will race in July in the Transpacific Yacht Race, or Transpac, from Los Angeles to Honululu. Ragtime has won two Transpacs, in 1973 and 1975 under different ownership, and will set the record for Transpac trips when it sails next month for the 14th time. There have been 44 runnings of the Transpac since the inaugural race of 1906.

This year, Welsh plans to race the boat with a smaller jib for because it makes for a more favorable handicap. However, a new jib also means new, smaller sails, and the crew will have to get accustomed to the change.

“We’ll be practicing,” Welsh said.

SORAYA NADIA McDONALD may be reached at (714) 966-4613 or soraya.mcdonald@latimes.com.