victoireday1 Continuing an every-other-Independence Day tradition that began in 1906, the competitors in the Transpacific Yacht Race set off again today, riding the wind across 2,225 nautical miles of ocean from Long Beach to Hawaii.

Paul Turang, Jr., of the Long Beach Yacht Club is among them, serving as a crew member aboard the Victoire, and GreaterLongBeach.com will be linking to his blog and photos throughout a journey that could take up to two weeks.

Victoire, a Beneteau 40.7, owned by Bob Atkins and carrying a crew of seven, was entered in Transpac in March. Most of the time since has been devoted to preparations, from physical upgrades to training races that enabled the crew to fine tune their collaboration.

28 Days

Monday, June 6, 2011 So it is only 4 weeks to the 1st start of Transpac. The Victoire crew has been extremely busy preparing the boat and themselves for the race. Pop Tops on Thursdays and overnight trips on the weekends and we are coming together as a crew. Friday we will be doing the BCYC Around the Islands race, with TP crew only. We are looking forward to a great race and testing the crew.

Race Day

Sunday, July 3, 2011 Well the boat is as ready as it can be and now it’s time to throw the list away and go racing. It’s been a crazy week, with provisioning, last minute repairs and upgrades to the boat, and getting all the gear organized. It looks like it might be light at the start but looks like a nice breeze building so hopefully we can get out fast. Hawaii here we come!

Wednesday, July 6, 2011 At our 6am position report we were in 3rd place! After a slow 1st night, we started making some time.  Wind was great yesterday with clear skies. Around 6pm we tacked over and headed to our next waypoint.  Great wind all through the night until about 5am.  Just trying to get away from the coast now and into some steady breeze.   Paul

Thursday, July 7 We continue to work our way west out to our first waypoint. We spent the first couple of days working up the coast to get into better breeze, but it hasn’t filled in completely yet.  The first two nights were tough going, as the darkness and fickle winds made it difficult to keep a good course.  Last night was better with steadier breeze and boat speeds into the mid 7kts.  Was pretty cold last night; can’t wait to get into the warmer waters.  We’ve been eating well, although everyone could probably use a little more sleep.  Paul

Saturday, July 9 So the breeze finally filled in and we were getting 20 kts overnight. We were a bit overpowered with our sail plan, and was a difficult night of sailing, but toughed it out until first light. However we lost a little ground. We changed down to the blast reacher and the boat was much better. Wind continued to build with 10ft swells on our beam making for some wild rides and hitting 10kts. Matt had the record at 10.3, the Charlie with 10.6.
Everybody else still got 10+.  In the early afternoon we put a reef in the main (Chief would be proud) as the wind climbed to 27kts.  Boat is handling great right now with near 9kt average speed.  We are going into the evening
and plan on hitting our first waypoint sometime around noon tommorrow.   Paul / Team Victoire

To be continued….