Sailing in Marin: Pacific Cup 2024 – The Fun Race to Hawaii
Doublehanding from San Francisco to Hawaii in the Pacific Cup (Pac Cup) race for the first time on his sailboat Bloom County is the culmination of some five years’ worth of delays for owner Elliott James. His first attempt to compete in the 2020 edition of the race was thwarted due to the pandemic, he was waitlisted for the 2022 event but notified of a place in the fleet too late to make it logistically work. Third time’s a charm, as they say, and Elliott is chomping at the bit to set sail in the 2070-mile biennial invitational race which finishes in Kaneohe, Hawaii, on the island of Oahu.
“I’ve been trying to do Pac Cup forever, not necessarily on my boat, but a ride with someone else just to do it and it’s never worked out!” James laughed. “People keep telling me I have the perfect boat to race Pac Cup on so we’re finally doing it!”
Bloom County, a Mancebo 31, is a purpose-built safe ocean racing boat so race prep has been relatively minimal for James, who will sail with his buddy Kyle Vanderspek. most of the work so far has involved putting together items required for a long voyage that one wouldn’t normally carry inshore, like an emergency rudder system, which James had built, and a power generation system (he’s installed solar panels).
“I never imagined doing a long offshore race like Pac Cup double-handed in the boat, but when we did the double-handed Farallons race in April in stormy conditions, she held up really well while boats around us were dismasting and breaking all kinds of things,” said James, who grew up sailing in the junior program at the Sausalito Yacht Club. “She’s well-built.”
Being sturdier than others in his Pac Cup fleet means bloom County will be faster upwind if it’s breezy, but the race is typically just a few days of reaching and mainly downwind, which will benefit the lighter boats in his division.
“I’ll have some stiff competition with boats who do well downwind. My main competition will be Wolfpack, a Donovan 30 also racing double-handed — very experienced sailors who have done the Pac Cup several times,” James said. “We rate similarly but I’m concerned about fending them off.”
Pam and Bill Hughes, who live aboard a power boat in Sausalito, purchased their Antrim 27 Cascade 18 months ago with the goal to race the Pac Cup. They were inspired to make each day count after Bill incurred a serious health issue. It took a few years for him to regain his strength but through that time he kept sailing. When his health improved, the couple figured that it was time to fulfill some lifelong dreams.
“Bill is now 100 percent so we’re doing Pac Cup while we’re healthy and if I can help his dream come true, I’m thrilled,” Pam Hughes noted. “ I think we will be successful if we can all work well together, learn something about each other, enjoy the immediate and whatever the outcome is I know that the process of doing it will be fun!”
A maritime couple who have been around boating for a long time, Pam and Bill Hughes completed the requisite safety training classes and have concentrated their race prep focus on getting to know the boat. Lopez is a veteran offshore racer with many ocean miles under his belt.
“It’s a pretty simple race boat with an open transom and not a lot of complicated systems,” Pam Hughes explained. “We’ve been at the boat at least twice a week figuring out how to store equipment, how to work the communications systems, testing out horrible dry foods that everyone seems to love for camping (laughs), going through safety inspections, we updated the rigging, and I’ve been swimming as much as possible to be in good shape.”
Other boats hailing from Marin include the custom 43-footer Carodon owned and skippered by Heather Richard (Sausalito) competing in Pac Cup for the first time, the Santa Cruz 52 City Lights, owned and skippered by Aaron Wangenheim (Tiburon). This will be Wangenheim’s third Pac Cup, and second on City Lights. Bob Horton (San Anselmo) is competing for the second time on his Cal 40 Highlander, and veteran ocean racer Paul Cayard, formerly of Marin, will skipper the Swan 65 Translated 9 US with a mostly amateur crew. Viva, the Cal 40 owned by Don Jesberg (Belvedere) is racing Pac Cup for the first time, although Jesberg is a veteran of nine Transpacific races.
Horton, learning from his first Pac Cup in 2018, commented, “We redid the boom preventer to be more elastic because we broke the boom four days out from the finish last time which was a heartbreaker! We’re looking forward to finishing the race on the podium, although we have some pretty tough competition in the Cal 40 fleet.”
Translated 9’s goal is to introduce its colleagues, clients, and collaborators to the sport and some 600 guests have sailed on the boat on the Bay in the past year. As Cayard explains, the Pac Cup experience is an opportunity for Translated 9 to embrace a corporate goal to celebrate the human element through communication and understanding.
“Translated discovered sailing as a means to support its corporate mantra which is, “we believe in humans, through communication and understanding,” Cayard explained. “With the right people, anything is possible, challenges are everywhere but if you have people with the right values; determination, discipline, desire, resilience to bounce back, and motivation — all virtues exemplified in sailing. It’s amazing the impact sailing has on a person. They have no idea.”
Follow the race: https://www.pacificcup.org/