With many victories from California to Hawaii, Sally and Stan Honey are preparing for the 52nd Newport Bermuda Race.
Honeys in Palo Alto, California is very well prepared. Crew setting: 1984 Olympic gold medalist Carl Buchan [Seattle, Wash.]Cal40 owner Don Jesberg [Belvedere, Calif.] And Jonathan Livingston [Richmond, Calif.] All are experienced seafarers.
Stan and Sally Honey on the Portsmouth Illusion [Sean McNeill photo]
The boat’s cruise equipment has been removed. The dining table and floorboards were removed, the heavy anchors and chains were gone, and the heaters were removed and removed. A safety inspection was conducted.
Honey, a two-time Rolex Yacht Woman of the Year award winner, said: We are buying a powerboat … moving to the dark side. “
“We sold the boat to our nephew John Vloric,” Honey said.
Honeys is not the first owner of the illusion. The honor belongs to America’s Cup winner Basmosbacher and legendary Long Island Sound Racer Vincent Montesano. Mosbacher and Montesano competed with Illusion in the first Bermuda race in 1966, taking second place in the class and second only to another Cal40, Thunderbird.
Honeys purchased Illusion in 1988 after winning the championship for about 20 years with a high-performance 505 dinghy. They went on to illusion because “Five O” was more physical than it needed to be.
“We had been racing the 505 for 20 years, so we bought the illusion as a cruising boat, but for some reason we couldn’t stop the race,” says Honey.
They both laughed at the preparations for the 1990 West Marine Pacific Cup, the first two-handed race from San Francisco to Kaneohe, Hawaii. It was just the fourth time they sailed the boat together and the inspectors were not convinced they were ready.
Stan and Sally Honey fantasy, surfing in the Pacific [Latitude 38 photo]
“That’s why the safety inspector comes down to the boat,” Honey recalls. “We had a lot of races and were ready to inspect everything, but we were rewiring the boat and the electrical system wasn’t complete.
“A lot of wires were sticking out. You can twist them to turn on things you need, such as running lights, but they’re not finished yet. So at the end of the inspection, the guy says,” Well, I need some advice. You were a lot. You passed the inspection. All the boxes are checked. But you are not ready! “
Despite the inspector’s anxiety, Stan and Sally assured him they were ready and then went outside to take second place in the first two-handed offshore race.
“The first race was really spectacular. It was the first time I used the autopilot steering to watch alone in the middle of the night,” says former sailing vessel maker Honey. “I made four new spinnakers for the boat the week before the race.
“The ’96 two-handed race was also very impressive. We sailed really hard in that race. I think we jibbed 15 times a night. We pushed really hard and Overall I won. It was fun from the other side of 1990 when I was barely ready. “
Honey recalls crushing the fleet in the 1994 one-handed trans-Pacific race. [San Francisco to Kauai], He set a 10-hour course record on the 11th. Elapsed time is faster than all Cal40 efforts in the crew’s TransPac race. [a longer course].. He also enjoyed taking on similar horizon work at Transpack, where he was a crew member with Sally in 2003.
“TransPac by Skip Allan and John Andron in 2003 was just a fool,” he said. “The boat was perfectly prepared and it was a great year for the race. The crew was unimaginably good. I beat the next Cal40 in about half a day. And the one-handed race was my highlight. Will be. “
While memories of past achievements were free to flow, Honeys also focused head-on on the next race, the Newport Bermuda race, the last race in Illusion.
For Sally Honey, this will be her third race to Bermuda, following 1970 and 2010. His seventh race for Stan Honey. In 2016, he navigated a 100-foot Comanche to a 34-hour, 42-minute course record. He did the same with Pyewacket, so it was the second time he navigated a record-breaking participant. [53h:29m] In 2002.
“I suggested to Sally that another major race on the boat, the Newport Bermuda Race,” says Honey. “Sally said it was a complete crew, who would we take to the crew for us? I said, imagine the best crew you can imagine. Do you go if we can get them? She said for sure, but we’re not going to get them.
“Sally has decided that the best crew members in the world will be Karl, Don, and Jonathan, so I emailed all three and within 10 minutes each said,” I’m in. ” Told. “
After the 2020 Newport Bermuda race was canceled, Illusion cruised in Maine for two summers. [Stan and Sally Honey photo]
However, no one was left behind, and Sally and Stan moved from 505 to Illusion, so it was time to make another shift.
They sell Illusion, but not far from George Griffith, the creator of the groundbreaking Cal40. George Griffith was also a close friend. They bought an old Griffith powerboat, a 48-foot Sarissa.
“We were thinking about moving to the dark side for a while, but we hadn’t seen anything we liked,” says Honey. “Sarissa is a sailor motorboat. She is 48 feet long, 11 feet wide, weighs 12,000 pounds and weighs 20 knots. George died in 2012, but his daughter Mary is our best friend. I We spent a weekend on a boat with her last summer and thought this would do it if we went to a powerboat.
“It’s not bittersweet. I’m looking forward to it.” There’s always more I can do, but it feels like I’ve checked most of the checkboxes on this boat. This will be the last big race. Stan’s One of the conditions for my nephew to buy a boat was that we had to sail with them whenever we were in the Chesapeake Bay area, so I’m really happy that it arrived at Stan’s nephew. I think, so it’s not like boats disappearing from our lives. “
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