Somerville resident places first in Trans-Pacific sailing race

Local man charts course of his team's victory at sea

The sailing ship, “Between the Sheets,” is shown with other boats which participated in the TransPac Yacht Race between Long Beach, Calif., and Honolulu, Hawaii. / Photo by Georges Brook

 Drenched in the cold spray of the ocean, he has seen a rainbow around the moon and glided beside a sleeping whale, and while enjoying the wonders of the sea, Eric Blumenkrantz of Somerville and his team of sailors placed first July 18 in the Transpac Yacht Race between Long Beach, Calif., and Honolulu.

The 49-year-old chief information officer at Kennedy International in South Brunswick said that on the water he finds a peace and insight that he has brought back to his life on land.
“I find my secrets to the universe out there,” he said. “All those things that seem so complicated on land seem so simple out there on the water.”
Sailing even has helped him in business.
“Almost everything I’ve learned about business has come from what I’ve learned in the course of sailing, from strategizing a course to learning how best to coach and inspire members of the team who might be losing focus,” said Blumenkrantz, who has been racing sailboats for more than 10 years.
His love of boats and the sea began when he was 9 years old and working as a camp counselor on Catalina Island off the coast of Los Angeles.
“After dealing with the crowds of 300 and 400 people who visited the island, it was a great feeling to grab a dinghy during our downtime. That’s when I first felt a sense of peace and calm from being on the water,” Blumenkrantz said.
With the small boats of his boyhood shrouded in the mist of the past, today Blumenkrantz travels the high seas on sailboats as big as tractor-trailers, like the 38,000-pound Between the Sheets, which he recently guided from California to Hawaii.
The boat is owned by Ross Pearlman, a member of the Balboa Yacht Club in Marina del Rey, Calif.
Blumenkrantz and his wife, Cynthia Crothers, a nationally certified child passenger safety specialist and technical adviser, moved to Somerville in 2009 and purchased a Victorian home, which Crothers said they absolutely love.
Crothers said her husband is very modest and never toots his own horn, but she noted that the Transpac race is the second only to the America’s Cup in the sailing world.