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Disney will Race in 2007 - August 18,
2006
LOS ANGELES—Roy E. Disney announced his retirement from sailboat
racing at the awards dinner for the 2005 Transpacific Yacht Race a year
ago, and now he has another bit of news: his comeback starts with the
next Transpac in 2007.
With selection of the crew for his Morning Light documentary film project
complete, Disney has confirmed rumors by declaring himself as the first
unofficial entry for what will be his 16th Transpac. Now the youngest crew
ever to sail the race will have as a counterpoint a 77-year-old skipper.
Disney will charter Pyewacket back from the Orange Coast College of
Sailing & Seamanship. He donated the three-year-old maxZ86 to OCC
after last year's race when Pyewacket finished 2 1/2 hours behind Hasso
Plattner's maxZ86, Morning Glory, whose elapsed time of 6 days 16
hours 4 minutes 11 seconds broke Disney's record of 7:11:41:27 set in
1999 on an earlier Pyewacket.
"The biggest thing is that I really got deeply involved in Transpac again
because of the Morning Light project," Disney said, "and the more I was
around it the more nostalgic I got about me in the race, and all of sudden
I found myself saying, 'We could probably rent that big boat back and do
it again.' "
And maybe reclaim the record?"
"If the wind blows this time there's a really good chance we'll break that
record," Disney said.
He will have the same basic crew, including Robbie Haines and navigator
Stan Honey, both key figures in the Morning Light project. The only
significant modification will be to refit the 18-foot-deep canting keel that
was replaced by one only 12-feet deep so the boat could sail into
Newport Bay, home of the OCC sailing school. Disney also has planned
a thorough checkout with possible upgrades of electronic and mechanical
systems, some new rigging and new sails.
Brad Avery, director of the OCC school, said, "It's good for us. There
aren't too many people out there to whom we'd want to charter a boat like
that. It requires an enormous effort. We couldn't afford to do that."
Last year in their Transpac debut the maxZ86s finished about two days
ahead of the Transpac 52s. Morning Light is a Transpac 52.
"The good thing is that we'll be far enough ahead of the kids on Morning
Light that we can be there at the dock to see the end of the movie,"
Disney said.
Pyewacket, whether it sailed or not, had already been declared the
scratch boat for 2007 with a rating limit conforming to its configuration
when it finished first in the 2004 Newport to Bermuda Race.
Posted by torresen_marine at August 18, 2006 03:05 PM
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