FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – June 23, 2010

PACIFIC CUP YACHT RACE TO START JULY 5
56 Yachts Poised to Race from San Francisco to Oahu

San Francisco – Fifty-six yachts, from 60-foot all-out racing machines, to 40-foot family efforts, to a pair of tiny 21-foot Mini-Transats, our smallest entries ever, are poised to compete in this year’s Pacific Cup race from San Francisco to Oahu’s Kaneohe Bay in Hawaii.

With less than two weeks to go until this sixteenth running of the Pacific Cup, “the FUN race” from San Francisco to Hawaii, the entrants are feverishly completing pre-race tasks and keeping an eye on the weather. The boats will start in front of Saint Francis Yacht Club in staggered classes from Monday, July 5 to Saturday, July 10, with no start on Friday.

This year’s class features a solid international representation, including Andromeda from Mexico, a 59-foot Swan, Limit from Australia, a 63-foot Reichel/Pugh racer, and Mirage a Santa Cruz 70 sailing for Peru. A group of Canadian boats rounds out the delegation, with Whistler V (Ohlson 38) and Scaramouche V (Palmer Johnson 49).

Fourteen of the entries will sail double-handed, challenging sleep deprivation and personality conflicts to guide their boats swiftly to the finish line near Kaneohe Bay. The remaining 42 entrants are fully crewed, with three to twelve aboard, working in shifts.

All of the participants are carefully watching the weather, hoping that the Pacific High, which governs wind strength and direction, will find its permanent Summer location before the start. In some years, a loosely-defined high pressure zone led to light and erratic winds, and a correspondingly slow race, somewhat favoring the lighter boats. This year’s weather pattern appears not yet fixed, as the Singlehanded TransPac racers discovered, starting in very heavy winds, only to find light breezes a few days later where they’d have hoped for a steady wind. With two weeks to go before the Pacific Cup start, however, chances are good for a solid weather pattern.

Regardless of the weather’s variations, all participants are looking forward to a remarkable, once-in-a-lifetime experience. Their friends and family will be able to follow along on the Pacific Cup website, which will include regular position updates, news, and racer blogs and comments at http://PacificCup.org.

The Pacific Cup, organized by the Pacific Cup Yacht Club, has 56 entrants for the 2,070-mile run to Kaneohe Yacht Club in Hawaii. For many entrants, this is their first major ocean crossing. This is the sixteenth race and the thirtieth year of the competition. For more information about the race and its entries, visit http://www.PacificCup.org.

Pacific Cup Yacht Club (PCYC) was established in 1979 to run the biennial Pacific Cup. PCYC’s mission is to realize the dreams of many sailors to participate in a competitive, safe, and fun race from San Francisco to Hawaii. As such, its pre-race seminars are not only qualifying events for Pacific Cup participation but a way to introduce and encourage participation in offshore sailing.

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