The winning skipper of this year’s Race to Alaska, Matt Pistay, has added another win to his summer.

Just after 2 a.m. Sunday morning July 21, the Seattle-based monohull “Team Hamachi” crossed the finish line of the 50th Transpacific Yacht Race with a corrected time of 8 days, 52 minutes, 37 seconds for their run from Los Angeles to Honolulu.

Pistay, of Port Ludlow, captained Team Angry Beaver in the R2AK. In the “Transpac” he sailed for tactician Frederic Lafitte, the President of PYI, a Lynnwood, WA, manufacturer and distributor of parts and supplies for boats, yachts and ships.

“They won their class, more importantly they won overall in corrected time,” said Dobbs Davis, press officer for the race. “TransPac” standings are complicated by boat class, start date and other ways the 50-year-old race measures excellence in addition to the simple punching of the start and finish clock. Rating formulae account for such parameters as length, sail area, displacement, and hull shape. Each boat’s actual time is mathematically adjusted, hence the term “corrected time.”

This year’s Transpac was the largest and arguably most competitive in history, with 90 entrants. That breaks the record set by the 1979 race, which drew 80 entrants.

This year also featured some difficult weather.

“In my analysis of this race, those like Hamachi who started the race on Friday (July 12) got the best conditions of the three start days of the race,” Davis said. The fastest-rated boats started Saturday, but ran into a unique condition called the “Catalina Eddy” in which weak southerly winds make it tougher to escape coastal conditions and catch the swift west-east trade winds that make for fast down-wind sailing.

The Transpac was first run in 1906. It is organized by the Transpacific Yacht Club.

The general predictability of the trade winds made possible vast journeys from the earliest days of sailing and now TransPac skippers use boats and canvas designed specifically for the down-wind leg. In past races, the margin of victory has been as narrow as 4 minutes, 31 seconds.

Racing reports from Hamachi reflect the way crews watch Trade Wind weather: “The high is consolidating and we expect strong trades to the finish,” Hamachi wrote. “We are working to catch two Roger 46s in front of us, as well as hold off the other J/125s, and the weather is showing that its a drag race to Honolulu.”

Davis said Transpac is really a three-part race. “The first part is getting off the starting line off the coast, past Catalina (Island).” Then, after that the second part is working upwind in coastal winds that are typically from the northwest. “Once past Catalina, you really wouldn’t be upwind anymore, you’re headsail reaching, which is a fast point of sail.”

At that point, the water is cold and the air is cold, he said. “It’s pretty big waves as well...and not pleasant sailing.” In those conditions, the most boats drop out, including a dramatic rescue of one competitor by another.

The cold middle segment is usually about two days and then the remainder of the race is sailed in balmy conditions. “You go from jibs to spinnakers,” Davis said. “By the last few days of the race, you’ve gone from being cold as hell to being warm as hell in the tropics….Foul weather gear and fleece to shorts and t-shirts.”

This is the oldest race of its kind.

Davis said if Pistay wants to continue offshore racing, he may want to head for Europe. “If he learns French he could be doing this all the time. France has a culture of lots and lots of offshore races.”