2015 Transpac coverage as seen in SAILING magazine
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| Last Betsycam shot of the day ... |
"Reality television show producers could not have dreamed up a more
cockamamie set of obstacles than what the 2015 Transpacific Yacht Race
served its 60 entrants, racing from Los Angeles, California, to
Honolulu, Hawaii, in July.
During the last of three starts there was
rain, thunder and lightening—unheard of in California mid-summer. A
hurricane threatened; the fleet was becalmed. Fires, failures and
things-that-go-bump-in-the-night peppered the course. And if that wasn’t
enough, during two of the busiest nights for arrivals, entrance to the
Ala Wai Marina was shut by a raucous south swell that rolled huge
breakers down the channel. Dozens of racers, eager for the traditional
greeting of mai tais and leis, were forced to stand off until dawn. "It was a trip to the Twilight Zone,” said Randy Smith ..."
Read the rest
here
Seventy-five miles northwest of Los Angeles, the Pacific
rushes up to the tidy Mediterranean-style city of Santa Barbara, at the
foot of the Santa Ynez Mountains. Chic shops and galleries line State
Street, tasting rooms and restaurants nestle in the Funk Zone, and rusty
trawlers make room for luxury yachts in the marina, opposite timeworn
Stearns Wharf.
Santa Barbara is one of the key jumping-off points for California’s
Channel Islands, a chain that parallels the coastline. Embraced as both a
national park and a marine sanctuary, the land and surrounding waters
have been protected since 1980.
