GENERATING GENERATIONS

Racing Transpac, from Los Angeles to Honolulu, is just as essential for some people as Thanksgiving gatherings. At 2,225 measured miles, a long race with an international component, Transpac is also intensely local. It’s a family thing

- KIMBALL LIVINGSTON

THERE are three growing boys in the household of Sarah and John Sangmeister, all of them still in school but big enough and hungry enough for racing Finns. While the youngest, Will, waits his turn, the older two, twins Peter and Jack, are rostered as 2023 Transpac crew for the Andrews 68 Rock n' Roll. And it's not their first rodeo.

Then there is boat partner and longtime shipmate Justin Smart, who is also bringing two sons, 20-somethings Cooper and Harrison. For the sons, this is a first big offshore race. Smart, who had great rides in the days of IOR maxis, says: "I didn't get a chance to introduce my boys to sailing. I was too busy racing, and they had other sports, but it's always gnawed at me."

And suddenly, four years ago, there had to be a new boat.

OK, reader, that's a bootleg turn, so hang on. We're going back two Transpacs to make sense of Sangmeister's description of the Rock n' Roll junkyard program today as "the dogs of yacht racing."

A few hundred miles into the 2019 Transpac, with the family's much-loved Santa Cruz 70, OEX, back in the fold after a time in other hands, the rudder bearing failed. The load it then released onto the rudder shaft leveraged the bottom open, and the boat swallowed the Pacific Ocean. The good news in the bad news turned on the advantages of being on a sea populated with other boats. Not to make light of a sinking, but only half an hour after a mayday call, a rescue began. Soon enough, all nine OEX crew were on deck with the skilled crew of Pyewacket, owned by Roy Disney (grandnephew of Walt), whose father sailed a record 15 Transpacs and took him on his first at age 16. It's a family thing, remember.