Waikiki Yacht Club’s James McDowell brought his Santa Cruz 70 “Grand Illusion” across the Diamond Head finish line at 2:59 Sunday morning, July 17, for an overall winof the 2,225-nautical mile 2011 Transpacific Yacht Race on corrected time.As reported earlier, “Bella Mente,” the 74-foot Reichel/Pugh sloop flying the New York Yacht Club burgee crossed the same finish line nearly two days prior to “Grand Illusion,” to become the first to finish Transpac, however the latter yacht’s handicap rating was more than enough to give it the overall win and capture the historic and coveted King Kalakaua Cup.
Coincidently, this year’s Transpacific Yacht Club Commodore Bill Lee, whose design innovations created the development of a new generation of light, fast boats nicknamed "sleds" for their ability to surf downwind on the trade winds, designed “Grand Illusion.”
“Grand Illusion” has been campaigned for years by James McDowell and by his father, Ed, who met the boat dockside at the Waikiki Yacht Club, Transpac officials said.
"The boat is raced all the time," McDowell said after the race. "Our goal coming in was to beat ‘Alchemy’ (Per Peterson’s Andrews 68) and win our class season championship, and we've done that now. We stayed focused on sailing the shortest distance, and sailing on the favored board,” McDowell added. “For a while, “Pegasus” (Philippe Kahn’s Waikiki 70) was looking fearsome in the south, but we were able to stop the bleeding."
"On the last day," McDowell said, "we started getting squalls with winds in the twenties, and we realized that all we had to do to win was finish, so we went conservative. We have a boatload of good drivers, and we could always keep a fresh driver on the wheel.”
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