Early Finishers Look Back at Tight Racing in ORR
The early starters are showing up at the finish line. Rahan, ‘io, and TC have all shown up for the party. We’re sure they’re enjoying the unusual (for them) sensation of having Kaneohe Yacht Club all to themselves.
Meanwhile, out on the water. while the Friday Starters may wring their hands at the early arrivals of the smaller boats, they have some pretty tight contests going on in their own divisions. The Friday starters are now totally mingled on the water with the other fleets, but we’ll break them out for scoring.
In ORR2, the UK Sailmakers Division, Maritimo 160 has a comfortable, but not commanding, lead of five hours over the next boats. But the four boat cluster of Halawa, Adrenalin, Oaxaca, and Cazan have but two hours separating them. We’re seeing position changes every hour or so as speed changes alter their predicted finish times.
Cal Maritime’s Oaxaca and Adrenalin will represent the 44th and 45th Santa Cruz 50s finishes in the Pacific Cup. Of course, as the two SC50’s, their race is a duel within the contest, and we know they are keeping a close eye on each other.
In ORR1, the Pasha Hawaii Division, Ragtime, that venerable sled, has a 20 hour lead on her next competitor, Roy Disney’s Pyewacket. It would take some miraculous intervention for Pyewacket to overtake her.
In fact, we are charmed to learn that, covering every base and honoring the culture of Hawaii, Pyewacket held a blessing ceremony for the crew and boat before departure. We’ll have more on that later, as well as an analysis of the effectiveness.
Pyewacket is fighting it out with Zeus for second, while the remainder of the fleet gets to scrap it out for fourth place or so.