Pyewacket II wins Hoag Cup

To see Stark Raving Mad finish first in every race and to listen to Pyewacket II’s people talk after the last race Sunday, it was difficult to guess which boat won the third biennial Invitational Regatta for the Hoag Cup.

Robbie Haines, the Pyewacket II tactician, said, “Today everything went wrong on our boat.”

But just enough went right for the 18-year-old Santa Cruz 70 to hold off its rivals — Ed McDowell’s defending champion Grand Illusion, also an SC 70 — by one point, and Jim Madden’s free-running three-year-old TP52 by three.

“We won,” said Pyewacket II skipper Roy Pat Disney with a tone of relief. “The rest of the stuff sorted itself out.”

Sweeping line honors through the three-day regatta will be Stark Raving Mad’s moral victory, while the ORR handicappers can pat themselves on the back for setting up some close competition by the numbers among a mixed bag of eight big boats.

It might have turned out otherwise if the weather gods hadn’t waited until the last two races to deliver the fresh breeze that brought Stark Raving Mad and the other TP52, Andy Rasdal’s Valkyrie, to life.

“I told you that with more breeze it’s easier for us,” said Gary Weisman, the North Sails president who drove SRM in the absence of Madden, whose doctor barred him from leaving shore so soon after recent surgery.

“I wish I’d had something to do with it,” said Madden, one of the founders of the event. “But its downwind performance was what I hoped it would be.”

That’s where SRM outclassed the fleet, especially capitalizing on the best wind of the weekend Sunday — 8 to 10 knots from the south — and the upgrades Madden made after acquiring the 2006 MedCup champion formerly known as Mean Machine.

Valkyrie was the only boat that could stay close in Sunday’s three-lap race around a 1.5-nautical mile windward-leeward course set off Newport Pier. Valkyrie finished only 52 seconds behind in elapsed time, while boat for boat Pyewacket II finished about 5 1/2 minutes back after fighting through a face-to-face, lead-swapping match race with Grand Illusion.

Upwind, the Pye II guys seemed to keep finding themselves on the wrong side of the course when the wind shifted the other way, and a litany of other stumbles included a guest sailor getting one leg tangled in a jib sheet.

But when the handicap numbers were crunched, Pye II held on by a tired thread on the strength of its handicap wins in the first three races Friday and Saturday.

Weisman didn’t take it too hard.

“I want to thank Jim [Madden] for letting us play with his new toy this weekend,” he said at the awards ceremony.

Incidentally, this Pyewacket is even older than has been noted in earlier reports. It’s not Pyewacket III but Pyewacket II, which was launched in 1991 and broke Merlin’s 20-year-old Transpacific Yacht Race record in 1997, also with Roy Pat as skipper when his dad was laid up with a broken leg. Roy E. Disney returned with Pye III in 1999 to break Pye II’s record.

Until the last few hundred yards, Grand Illusion looked to have a shot at keeping its crown that helmsman Patrick O’Brien won in McDowell’s absence two years ago. This time McDowell was there all weekend, right behind O’Brien.

“I must have brought them bad luck,” said McDowell, who also won the 1999 Transpacific Yacht Race on corrected time despite a badly torn main sail.

A similar problem afflicted Chris Welsh, who borrowed Al and Vicki Schultz’s Vicki because his legendary Ragtime was undergoing repairs. Vicki suffered a tear at its top batten and retired five minutes after the start to become a roving spectator boat.

Video taken by t2ptv of all three days is on the event website and will be available for one year.

The sponsor-supported regatta, organized and hosted by Hoag Hospital, the Balboa Yacht Club and Newport Harbor Yacht Club, benefits Hoag Heart and Vascular Institute. This event and the first two in 2005 and 2007 have raised a total of more than $900,000, the most for any single sailing event in the nation.

Video taken by t2ptv of all three days will be available on the event website for one year.

Overall standings

(Five races; by corrected handicap time; ORR ratings in parentheses)

1. Pyewacket II (Santa Cruz 70; 1.046), Roy Pat Disney, Los Angeles, 1-1-1-4-5, 12 points; 2. Grand Illusion (SC 70; 1.021), Ed McDowell/Patrick O’Brien, Redondo Beach, 3-2-3-2-3, 13; 3. Stark Raving Mad (TP52; 1.081), Jim Madden/Gary Weisman, Newport Beach, 2-6-5-1-1, 15; 4. Valkyrie (TP52; 1.063), Andy & Camille Rasdal, San Diego, 5-3-6-3-2, 19; 5. Chayah (1D48, 1.000), Oscar Krinsky/Chris Redman, Long Beach, 6-5-2-5-7, 25; 6. Westerly (SC 70; 1.007), Tim & Tom Hogan, Newport Beach, 4-7-4-6-4, 25; 7. It’s OK (Andrews 50, 1.057), Tom Purcell/Tres Gordos Sailing LLC, Balboa, Calif., 7-4-7-7-6, 31; 8. Vicki (Andrews 70; 1.064), Chris Welsh, Newport Beach, 8-8-8-8-9/DNF, 41.