The sinking of the Santa Cruz 70 OEX trans-Pacific yacht early Monday morning set a sad record for the Transpacific Yacht Race.
“It’s the first time a boat has sunk in the entire 106-year history of this event,” Bo Wheeler, staff commodore of the Transpacific Yacht Club, said early Monday afternoon in an interview at the Hawaii Yacht Club.
All nine crew members of OEX, a 70-foot Santa Cruz model monohull owned and skippered by John Sangmeister, were rescued by the crew of the 68 Pyewacket, a competitor in the same class owned and skippered by Roy Pat Disney of the Waikiki Yacht Club, which left the race to rescue the crew members, as required, he noted, by the race’s rules.
“The primary emphasis of the Transpac board of directors is safety,” Wheeler said. “We have the most stringent safety requirements of any blue-water race.”
The vessel was about 242 nautical miles southwest of San Diego and taking on water at the time crew members made the distress call, according to Chief Petty Officer 3rd Class Matthew West, Coast Guard Sector Honolulu spokesman.
The Coast Guard Sector San Diego launched a helicopter but returned after it heard another vessel came to their rescue.
The OEX crew “found water intrusion around the rudder post they could not control,” Wheeler said.
They put out a mayday call at 2 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time, and the Pyewacket arrived on the scene at 2:30 a.m. “Disney spotted the crew in life rafts” and took them aboard, Wheeler said.
The Santa Cruz 70 OEX sank at about 3 a.m.
The base price of a Santa Cruz 70 is about $500,000, but the campaign to tune up such an ultralight, downwind sled of a boat for the open-ocean race with new sails and other equipment, plus expenditures on the crew and food, would probably have added about another $500,000, estimated a Hawaii Yacht Club member and former Transpac racer who asked to remain anonymous.
The Santa Cruz is a legendary yacht model, designed in 1986 by Bill Lee, the most identified designer with the Transpac race, who set a record on Merlin, a Santa Cruz 68, in 1977 that lasted 20 years.
The Santa Cruz 70 OEX set the 2008 Long Beach-to- Cabo San Lucas record under owner Peter Tong.
The Pyewacket, carrying the nine Santa Cruz crew members and 10 Pyewacket crew members, was expected to arrive in Marina Del Ray, Calif., this morning.
Asked whether the Pyewacket could regroup and rejoin the race from Long Beach, Calif., to Honolulu, Wheeler shook his head.
“She could turn around and race and ask for redress,” he said, but in his opinion “she’ll retire.”
Disney’s father is the late Roy E. Disney, nephew of Walt Disney.
Sangmeister, a Select Director member of the board of the U.S. Sailing Association, is owner of Gladstone’s, a Hawaii-theme restaurant in Long Beach from whose yacht harbor the Transpac race departs for Honolulu every two years.
Another Hawaii connection: The lead boat in the race, as of press time, was Hookolohe, a Farr 57 monohull sailing out of the Waikiki Yacht Club.
Meanwhile a skipper aboard a multihull, Maserati Multi 70, reported damage to the boat’s left hull bow and rudder wing when it collided with an unspecified large floating object.
“We didn’t understand what it was, but it was very big, it came out of the water, at least one meter high out of the water,” said skipper Giovanni Soldini, according to a news release from race officials. “It hit the left-side hull with great force, severely damaging it, then it glided along the hull and hit the rudder. The fuse system worked, but the object was so big that we lost the outer half of the wing.”
The Maserati stopped for an hour but resumed sailing.
This year’s Transpac race involved three separate starts that took place Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.
A record 90 boats entered the 2,225 nautical-mile race, but six boats retired from the race due to various problems.
