OFFSHORE RACING

Stan, The T-Pac Man

Interview By Peter Isler

When it comes to racing in the biannual Transpacific Yacht Race, there's one guy who would be first on any boat's dream team. That would be Bay area resident and former 505 class champion Stan Honey, who's won nearly half of the 16 races he sailed to Hawaii. He also happens to hold the singlehanded, doublehanded, and fully crewed records from the mainland to the Aloha State. On Sunday, Sailing World's editor at large, Peter Isler caught up with the navigator-extraodinaire, who was back onboard defending champion Roy Disney's turbo-sled Pyewacket in their quest of a three-peat on the run to Diamond Head lighthouse.

GPS: What's so special about this race from L.A. to Honolulu?

Honey: It's the most challenging race for a navigator because it puts the navigator in the toughest spot, where you have to sail a course where you are giving away distance and position to sail the fastest course. In most races, the tactics are dominated by what I call the "greedy algorithm." This is the tactic that Ockam Instruments has made famous where at any given instant you maximize your closing rate with the finish, assuming that the wind is going to shift and that you don't have perfect ability to forecast the future wind. In the Transpac, that never works!

For the first half or two-thirds of the race you have to intentionally sail a course that does not have the fastest closing rate in order to achieve what at the end of the day is the fastest overall route. And it's just a much tougher problem for the navigator to work in that environment where you're investing in order to have the fastest course overall. Nevertheless, you're sailing a course that's allowing your competitors to get closer to the finish in the short term.

GPS: What are the likely tactical considerations you will be pondering at the start and the first few days out?

Honey: The key for the first third of the race is determining the point at which you cross the ridge that extends off to the southeast from the Pacific High. And once you cross that ridge the wind comes aft quite quickly… and then you are mostly just sailing VMG angles on starboard pole. Starboard pole is favored enough so that you can't jibe but you're sailing a bit above the finish, and you're nervous about getting too close to the center of the high. So what you do is sail your VMG numbers. Occasionally, there will be a year where you heat it up just a touch because the finish isn't dead downwind. But most years, for that middle third of a race, you're kind of in a slot where you can't jibe and you're sailing your VMG angle.

So the critical decision is which slot to get into. And that's determined by where you are when you cross the ridge. You must determine where that ridge is, what the high will be doing as you approach it, figure out a waypoint where you want to cross it, and then figure out the route to get to that waypoint the fastest. Usually after leaving the west end of Catalina to port, it's a windy fetch. As you get closer to the waypoint, you free, but you're still close reaching. Just about the time you get to the waypoint, you set a reaching kite and within a few short hours you're carrying a much lighter kite, the pole is back, and you're on your downwind angle. Then you play it out for the next three days and see if you got it right.

GPS: What about the final third of the race?

Honey: The final part of the race gets interesting again from a tactical standpoint when the wind has shifted far enough around so that it's possible to jibe. Suddenly, you're making decisions again. You have the freedom because the wind has clocked around enough towards the east that you can sail on either pole. At this stage, you should be jibing on the shifts, playing the squalls while figuring out which corner to favor. Most years it's the right-hand, northerly corner because you're past the upper-level ridge. At that point, there's good breeze clear across the course to the north or south and you know that the wind is going to continue to clock right, so the right hand corner will be favored. So you stick it up there on starboard pole, and then jibe in to Molokai, sailing the lowest port-pole angles you've seen during the entire race. You want to be sure not to overstand, and on the way to that corner, you want to be sure to hit the shifts in the squalls. You never want to ignore a big short-term shift to the right, but overall, you want to favor starboard pole and hit that right-hand corner.

Yet, there can be little waves in the tradewinds that are caused by an inverted trough. Little cells come spinning off Mexico and move to the west with the trades. If you're in front of one of those, you want to get close to it because there's a left shift and more wind in front of it. So, if you're going to beat one of these to Hawaii you often want to shift your game plan and favor the southern corner on the approach to the islands to take advantage of the increased winds and left shift as it closes. If you're going to be behind one of these, so that the inverted trough will reach the finish before you, you want to hit the right corner hard because there's lighter winds behind them, and an even stronger right-hand shift. Even if it's a normal year, you have to be constantly on the lookout for one of these inverted troughs.

GPS: Do you have a favorite memory from your Hawaii races?

Honey: I guess my favorite memory was when we were first to finish on Drifter in 1979. Back then, the Transpac was a big deal. There were police lines and crowds of people and bands and hula skirts, and it was my first good finish in the race. Then, of course, the singlehanded race was huge fun, too. Not only was it the fastest singlehanded passage, but also the fastest Cal 40 passage ... ever.