UPDATE: It is no longer if they can – they fucking did it! Mighty Merloe was first to finish at 17:03 HST, smashing the elapsed time record! Pictures coming asap!
If the Mighty Merloe can hold off her much newer (and theoretically much quicker) Transpac competition for another half a day, her crew will have pulled off the greatest upset of the year in offshore racing. H.L. Enloe’s 2004 vintage ORMA-60 gives away 10 feet in length and the better part of a decade in boat design to the 70s – the foiling Maserati and the multiple-record-setting Phaedo – but that doesn’t seem to be bothering Merloe. She sits on 29 knots with just 345 NM to the finish line, and once again our man crush grows for the indomitable Loick “lo-lo” Peyron (enlisted for the trip along with French tri superstars Jacques Vincent and Franck Proffit). And navigator Artie Means is showing what we already knew – the boy can play.
In other news, the boat that weighs and costs more than the entire multihull fleet combined sits a day back. Chat about the Transpac here.
