Though an unlikely bluewater racer, the Wyliecat 30 Mustang Sally performed quite well, finishing sixth in a fleet of 60.

In early July last year, the West Marine Pacific Cup fleet set sail from San Francisco for Kaneohe Bay, Oahu. Among the fleet of 60 was an unlikely racer, a Wyliecat 30 named Mustang Sally, owned by an unlikely skipper, a sailor with little bluewater experience. The story of Mustang Sally is told here by the man who helped get her to Hawaii — the well-known West Coast sailor Warwick Tompkins.

Sailing a small boat from California to Hawaii in a race like the Pacific Cup is not an especially arduous or dangerous activity. However, the sea and meteorology always present new challenges, with the principal areas of concern being crew, the craft and the course.

Mustang Sally is a Tom Wylie-designed catboat just 30 feet long. She has a waterline of 25 feet, and a beam of 9 feet, 5 inches, but is just 7 feet, 4 inches wide at the waterline. She weighs 5,500 pounds, and is rigged with an unstayed carbon fiber mast and a wishbone boom that carries a 430-square-foot mainsail. The underwater appendages are modern in the extreme: A keel and bulb weighing 3,050 pounds and a balanced spade rudder. The Wyliecat was designed for daysailing with ultimate ease and thus there are but three lines to operate: a halyard, an outhaul and a sheet.

I had the opportunity to sail this boat on numerous occasions and recommended her to my friend Bill Siegel, who subsequently bought her. I found her to be extremely well-behaved and quite rewarding; she was fast, simple and extremely maneuverable. She was also an excellent combination of technological advances.

Little did I know Bill Siegel not only bought the boat on my suggestion, he decided to race her from San Francisco to Kaneohe Bay, inviting me to prepare the boat and race the 1996 Pacific Cup with him.

The real beginning of this race took place in 1995, when Bill Siegel first contacted me. We met at a restaurant in San Jose, California. Bill is a gracious and thoughtful host. He was 64 years old when we met. Bill is a sailor; an aviator, who flew a light plane from the United States to Australia; a motorcyclist, who rode from Cairo to Cape Town. He is also a physician who served in the Navy as a flight surgeon. When I met him, he was a senior pathologist at his hospital in San Jose.

After I sailed a fully-crewed race to Tahiti with Bill, I knew his skills pretty well and, more importantly, I knew his temperament and attitude. I also knew that I could sail the Wyliecat singlehanded if absolutely necessary. In the end, I decided to accept.

How does one turn a daysailer into an ocean racer? First, one needs a sound and strong vessel; in my judgment, the Wyliecat satisfied that requirement admirably. The race rules specify Category One. I obtained a copy and set to work installing the necessary gear in Mustang Sally.

Keeping weight to a minimum was a major consideration. The greatest weight would be the water requirement: We had to carry 30 gallons of water at the start and had to finish with a reserve of 2 1/2 gallons. I constructed a shelf for six 5-gallon plastic bottles and supplied a pump to extract the water. Because the race is predominantly a starboard-tack affair, this shelf was close to the hull on the starboard side, giving the boat 30 gallons of water ballast, at least when on a starboard tack. I also installed a lightweight watermaker.

Mustang Sally had no engine or generating capacities, so I recruited a trusted electrical outfit to analyze our consumption for the race. The draws would be running lights, Windex, compass light, house and chart lights, autopilot, watermaker, weatherfax and SSB radio. They supplied an 8-D battery and three solar panels to power the whole lot. We satisfied the propulsion requirement with an outboard motor.

Daysailers do not normally carry adequate sea berths and Mustang Sally was no exception. Race rules specified that the water could not be stored higher than the normal bunks, so I built an adjustable sea berth to fit above the water bottles. This left the opposing side free for food storage, seating and food preparation. I installed a single-burner Seacock stove powered by disposable propane bottles and self-gimballing. Food storage was simple: Plastic bins secured with cleats and cordage. We carried four which, along with a large plastic cooler/icebox, was quite sufficient. Bill's wife prepared seven meals that we kept frozen with a combination of wet and dry ice.

We also installed a pair of autopilots. The Wyliecat steers very easily, even downwind in fresh airs, so the pilots did not draw excessively on our meager supply of power.

So that was our daysailer modified to go to sea, with a keen eye on weight and durability. We think we added about 900 pounds by the time Mustang Sally was ready to race.

The Pacific Cup is touted as the "fun race to Hawaii" by sponsor West Marine. The race race commences off St. Francis Yacht Club in San Francisco and finishes 2,070 miles to the southwest, off the entrance to Kaneohe Bay, Oahu. In the interest of bunching the finishers, the organizers stagger the starts over four days; the slowest boats start first. Traditionally there are tides and westerlies at the start, leading to northwesterly winds of varying duration and strength immediately off the California coast. As one progresses along the great circle toward Hawaii and warmer latitudes, the northwesterly winds gradually clock into the northeast, becoming the well-loved trade winds which grow more easterly the farther one goes south and west.

The actual conditions on this route depend on the activity and location of both the jet stream and the Pacific high. Most racers carry a means to obtain weather maps that show all the available meteorological data, updated and transmitted as often as four times daily. En route, slower boats usually try for a great circle course while faster boats go wind searching. Rarely does it pay to try to cross the course after being committed north or south. Consequently, much of the race is decided surprisingly early on.

When the wind swings to the north and slightly east of north, one is entering the center portion portion of the course and can expect reliable breezes, depending on the proximity to the high: It will be light if the high is close. This middle portion of the course is spent drying out from the first days, enjoying the trade winds and concentrating on boatspeed and course. The winds will continue to clock east, necessitating more square running and, finally, jibing. The final third of the race is sailed in increasingly squally conditions. One must cope, on occasion, with winds to 40 knots with as much as a 45-degree difference in direction from the "parent" trades. After such a squall passes, there is usually a light area following it, replete with wicked cross seas.

Ultimately one nears the islands and approaches the finish line. This can be very exciting, since the finish line is directly to windward of an exposed reef against which the Pacific rollers break. There is about three-quarters of a mile of searoom after crossing the finishing line—approaching this line under spinnaker with a following sea in the dark is pretty stimulating.

So that was the 1996 Pacific Cup. Long in distance, but nothing especially hazardous or requiring equipment out of the ordinary.

For me, the question was: Will I enjoy the boat enough to warrant the effort? The answer was yes; the Wyliecat was delightful and my judgment concerning Bill Siegel was borne out: He did just fine. We finished fourth in a class of 12 and sixth in a fleet of 60, having benefited enormously from the staggered start.

Warwick Tompkins sailed Mustang Sally home singlehanded in August. When his autopilot failed, he went for his backup. "In my mind's eye I could see where I had lashed it," he said. Unfortunately, to lighten the boat for day races in Honolulu shortly before the passage, the backup was taken off and left behind. After more than 22 days and 2,400 miles without and autopilot, hand steering much of the time, Tompkins arrived in California. With a laugh, he acknowledged that even seasoned sailors can make mistakes.