| | |  Travel & Outdoors | September 2008 
Pye V to Face 78-Year-Old Wooden Rival in PV09
 Sail-World
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| | 'Rose of Sharon V' | 
| PV2009: The Course
Race 1: to Cedros Island/Turtle Bay (376nm)
Race 2: to Magdalena Bay (220nm)
Race 3: to Cabo Falso (152nm)
Race 4: to Puerto Vallarta (286nm) | | |
First, you learn to sail, then to race. Then you learn to race offshore, and no event offers a more comprehensive introduction to the sport than Del Rey YC's biennial race to Puerto Vallarta, now revamped in its 20th year into an International Race Series.
Offhand, it's an alltime mismatch: Roy E. Disney's new Pyewacket V racer-cruiser against Byron Chamberlain's Rose of Sharon in Del Rey Yacht Club's PV09 International Race Series to Puerto Vallarta starting Jan. 31.
The 78-year-old wooden schooner will certainly be the oldest boat in the race. Perhaps any race. 'I can guarantee last place,' Chamberlain declared.
But Chamberlain's easy attitude for the 20th biennial event, presented by CORUM Swiss Timepieces, reflects the lighter side of a new format consisting of four separate races along the way from Marina del Rey down Baja California and concluding at the resort city of Puerto Vallarta on the Mexican mainland.
Besides, Rose of Sharon should get a whale of a handicap.
The object is to provide serious racers an opportunity to sail hard between layovers at Turtle Bay, Magdalena Bay and Cabo San Lucas for as many legs as they choose to sail. There are currently 37 preliminary entries. The limit is 40 for boats going as far as Cabo or Puerto Vallarta because of mooring limitations at those ports.
Rose of Sharon will be going all the way.
'We have an office that just opened in Puerto Vallarta,' Chamberlain said.
Chamberlain, 70, has a marine insurance business based in Newport Beach - or, rather, he now works for his son who runs the business he started 50 years ago.
By that time Rose of Sharon was already an old boat but a special one designed by Starling Burgess, who also created three successful J-class defenders of the America's Cup - Enterprise in 1930, Rainbow in 1934 and Ranger in 1937 - the latter in collaboration with the late Olin Stephens II, who died Sept. 13 at 100 years of age. In earlier years, Burgess was allied with the Wright brothers in aviation design.
Fifty-one feet overall and 42 feet at the waterline, Rose of Sharon was built and launched in Nova Scotia in 1930, its name taken from a variety of historical references, some biblical. Chamberlain, its fourth owner, acquired it in 1976.
Earlier, he owned a boat called the Golden Hind - no, not Sir Francis Drake's 16th century, 70-foot galleon of the same name or he might be racing that instead.
Chamberlain has a thing about old boats and mature sailors.
'[Wooden boats] are coming back,' he said.
He hopes to assemble a crew of septuagenarians like himself and has already lined up one old pal, John Conser, the noted Southern California catamaran designer who just reached 70.
Rose of Sharon has seen good days on both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, as well as the Great Lakes, racing in the Newport to Bermuda, a couple of Swiftsure races, the SORC in Florida and winning PHRF honors in (the other) Newport to Ensenada in 1980, among other successes.
'We were first to finish in the 1981 Ancient Mariner race from San Diego to Maui with an elapsed time record that still stands,' Chamberlain said, '13 days 7 hours.'
Chamberlain also recalled racing against Disney in the 60s when both sailed schooners.
So, clearly, Pye V will have its hands full, especially if the race handicappers are favorable with the Rose of Sharon's rating.
The boat is not entirely original. Chamberlain has replaced the deck, wiring and plumbing and reinforced the wooden masts while installing a microwave, electric refrigeration, four-burner stove, furnace, hot water heater and 18-gallons-an hour water maker.
'We broke the bowsprit going to Hawaii so we put on a new one in '82,' he said.
Speaking of bowsprits, they seem to be making a comeback these days.
'Everything goes around,' Chamberlain said. 'They finally come back to the real good ideas.' |
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