Today the race course was plagued with another day of extremely light winds. Despite the fact that the RC extended the finish deadline to 1700 on Sunday, we saw the retirement of an additional seven boats since the 0700 check-in.
Remaining in the race are Brack Duker’s SC 70, Holua skippered and navigated by Peter Isler, facing off against rival, Ed McDowell’s SC 70 Grand Illusion skippered by James McDowell and navigated by Patrick O’Brien. Grand Illusion last won this race in 2007 while Holua is still looking for her first win. Grand Illusion seems to be controlling the game for most of today, however there are still over 500 miles to go.
It is a race against the clock at this point for John Schulz’s SC 50 Horizon, which is owner skippered and navigated by Richard Parlette. All of their competitors in ORR 3 have thrown in the towel and are headed for home. Horizon won the overall in this race in 2011, under then owner Jack Taylor but for this year’s race it looks like it is coming down to waterline and Horizon might be coming up short. However, there is still a lot of race left and anything can happen.
In the multihull class, John Gallagher’s Chim Chim officially withdrew at 1645 today, leaving Lloyd Thornburg’s Phaedo3 and Howard Enloe’s Mighty Merloe left to battle it out between each other. Both of these boats are used to going fast, really fast. Mighty Merloe set an elapsed course record in 2015 of 1D:16h:14m:14s, seeing a top speed of 38 knots. We overheard their crew talking on the dock before the start: “I never thought of the Cabo race as more than a 2 day race.” Time to find a deck of cards, gentlemen.
It will be interesting to see what happens overnight, as the forecast is slightly improving.
