Spirit of Aloha | Features | January/February 2008

The Big Race
By: Betsy Crowfoot

Photography by Sharon Green

California to Hawai‘i, on the blue enormity

For a century, adventurers in boats big and small, from 27-foot slight to 161-foot grand, have sailed from California to Hawai‘i in the Transpac—the world’s longest standing offshore yacht race. They come to compete every two years (or thereabouts) from all nations, backgrounds and capabilities. The race is either the icing on the cake for lifelong yachtspeople or, for budding novices, the mark that they’ve finally arrived.

There were 74 entrants in the 2007 rendition of the race, originally proposed by King David Kalā­kaua in 1888 and first held in 1906. This year’s lineup included more flash and cash than usual. In addition to crews comprised of families, amateurs, athletes and ty­coons, there were several teams of young adults and one movie in the making: Morn­ing Light.

Morning Light was the inspiration of Roy E. Disney, who, although retired as chairman of the Feature Animation Di­vi­sion of The Walt Disney Co., was not quite done with filmmaking yet.

He and co-producer Leslie DeMeuse (also a Transpac veteran) recruited 15 of the youngest sailors ever involved in the race, molding and melding them into a team that would take a 52-foot, state-of-the-art race boat along the 2,225-mile course. Every minute of their selection, preparation and competition was filmed (from multiple angles) to provide fodder for the soon-to-be-released motion picture.

It was no surprise that Disney, a 30-year fanatic of the race, would launch the Morning Light campaign. Long­time supporters of sailing, Disney and De­Meuse have often sought vehicles to share their sail­ing passion with the masses. Now they’d joined the reality-show bandwagon as a means to illustrate the way sailing had possessed them all those years.

Disney promised to let the Morning Light story unfold as it may. “I don’t care as much whether they win or lose, as how they come together as a group,” he said. Instead of the contrived dramas and dares of a Hollywood set, their chal­­lenges would be real and their dy­namics unscripted. With Disney’s assertion of the team being the youngest Transpac crew ever, other adolescent sailors were piqued, including two teenagers from Kailua, Sean and Justin Doyle. The sons of four-time Transpac veteran Dan Doyle, they formed a team with Roscoe Fowler of Honolulu and two Californians, Ted White and Cameron Biehl. Their combined age averaged close to 20—nearly a year younger than Morn­ing Light’s mean age and a good two years younger than the previous record holders: a 1969 team called “The Whiz Kids.”

Calling their boat On the Edge of Destiny and fueled by goldfish crackers and Red Bull energy drinks, the young men embarked on a race they ultimately de­scribed as “pretty routine.”

“We just wake up, sail for three hours, sleep for two,” said Justin Doyle, 18, noting the lighter-than-usual wind during the 2007 race.

Despite the perceived competition be­­tween Morning Light and On the Edge of Destiny, however, Sean Doyle, 19, ad­mitted solidarity with the other team, made up of 11 guys and a single gal, Genny Tulloch. They were both “pushing the envelope,” he said, pointing out that the two dissimilar boats started on different days and in different divisions.

In fact, the Transpac has always been two races in one: moneyed moguls like Disney, Larry Ellison, Jim Douglas, Ted Turner, Philippe Kahn, Hasso Plattner and the like spending what they thought it would take to be first to finish, and recreational sailors like Inez and Wil­lard Bell, who took their kids aboard an old wooden 50-footer on a biennial family vacation.

By the early 1990s the race had be­come lopsided, with numbers dwindling. A new “Aloha Class” was introduced to increase the appeal to families and ama­teurs not competing for the “barn door”—the massive koa-wood trophy for the first to reach the finish line abreast of Diamond Head—who would sail for the thrill and the pursuit of a personal best.

It was the Aloha Class that Lind­say Austin entered aboard Cirrus, a 40-foot racer-cruiser out of Kāne‘ohe. This was notable because the 22-year-old North Shore woman had been cut in the final selection of the Morning Light crew a year earlier.

“I grew up at the Waikīkī Yacht Club, and every year Transpac came into town I volunteered at the headquarters and ran the shuttle,” said Austin. “Racing in Transpac was something I always wanted to do. When the Disney project came about, I thought it was the perfect opportunity. And when it didn’t work out, there was nothing left to do but do it myself!”

Austin, who has a USCG Captain’s License, chose her 52-year-old mother, Donna Austin, and three other women from Honolulu’s Women’s Yacht Racing Association to join her on Bill Myer’s yacht. She admitted they were “underdogs” of sorts.

Considering that half the team had delivered the boat from Hawai‘i to the Mainland before starting the race, they arrived back in Honolulu unexpectedly fit and ebullient after 18 days, recounting the beauty of the colorful sails, blue skies, the rumble and roar of the water rushing by, pilot whales, mahi mahi dinners and a fabulous result.

On July 16, after one full week at sea, the morning roll call put them in first place in their class. “We were so excited,” said Austin, who also conceded in­tense pressure to maintain the lead as a result. They did, and a buoyant Austin arrived at the Ala Wai fuel dock to a raucous welcoming crowd. She was the youngest skipper to take home a first-place trophy that year.

Austin, who maintained friendships with the Morning Light crew, including Mark Towill, a fellow Waikīkī Yacht Clubber, said, “This is not the last Trans­­pac I will ever do, but it sure has been the best first one I could have asked for, for myself and the crew.”

In fact, it’s this yearning to return that is so appealing to organizers and enthusiasts, who gather every other year by the hundreds on both sides of the Pa­ci­fic to preserve this festive, long-standing tradition.

“It’s a great race,” says Justin Doyle, with one under his belt. “I think young people should get involved because it’s something you can do for years and years, and something that people grow to love. I’m sure most of the people do­ing it this year have done it before and will want to do it again.”

His father, Dan, who will head the 500-strong Honolulu-based committee for the 2009 race, had another perspective: “These kids are all enthusiastic about the race. The Morning Light kids are all enthusiastic about it. And when that movie hits the theaters we’ll have a lot of young people saying, ‘Hey, what’s this all about?’ To me it’s the greatest thing in the world.”

Morning Light, the film, is slated for re­lease on Oct. 17, 2008. The 45th biennial Transpac will begin in July 2009.

BETSY CROWFOOT, sailor and writer, is a Transpac veteran. She also writes for leading yachting magazines. She lives in California.

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