Alchemy: The Medieval art of turning ordinary metals into gold.

Mary and Dick Compton have raced their Andrews/Dencho 70 "Alchemy" for about 11 years now. Dick had the previous Dencho/Peterson 42 "Geronimo" for about 10 years so it is clear that they keep their boats for a while and are not one of the owners who change to a new boat every two or three years. Dick and Mary observed that new boats were not being built to IMS and didn't see any reason to compromise the performance of their boat for the next 10 years to fit a rule without much competition in their Southern California area. In the early stages Dick said "Transpac is just ONE race". He's gone Transpac before and they would like to see Alchemy do it again, but Transpac isn't the Compton's focus. In particular, they did not want to build a boat for just the 2003 Transpac that would then have been limited by some of the compromises made to rate well under IMS.

Instead Dick asked if there was a way that Transpac could allow a new boat, not tuned to IMS, but with equivalent speed to be eligible. This was possible last June and July because Transpac had not published the details of their rules even though they had stated the principals to keep the four existing 75's as upper limit boats. Transpac expressed interest in having another top end boat and suggested that we make a proposal.

Last summer we proposed a method for Transpac to allow new boats of equivalent speed potential, but not designed to IMS. The proposal was circulated to several people involved, including the teams from the existing boats. Perhaps not surprising in retrospect, there were different views of what is "fair" and "equal". It quickly became clear that a system to have a boat with equal Transpac speed potential, but with a hull not designed to "fit" IMS, would not be agreed by the TPYC Board before construction start was needed in order to make the start of the race.

The Comptons decided that rather than compromise their boat by designing to a rule for which they saw little future in Southern California, they would forego this Transpac. After all, when the MaxZ86's are allowed in 2005, this boat will be well below the maximum limit. At the time this decision was made the deck was already under construction. Dick and Mary now asked that we ignore the Transpac limits and make the boat as fast as possible. It has a lifting keel for harbor access, is light weight at about 27,000 pounds and also has significant amount of water ballast which accounts for the flared topsides. Also different from the last group of Transpac boats is the rig is fractional non-overlapping jibs but masthead spinnakers. To keep the rig safe and the boat easy to sail for Wednesday night racing, the spreaders are swept aft, there are no runners and the forestay is adjustable.

Dick and his crew have sailed many Mackinac Races on "Geronimo" and previous boats that are based in Michigan with his brother. With Transpac out of the picture, it made sense to do a Great Lakes tour this summer so "Alchemy" is scheduled to be delivered out of California in late May or early June in time for a summer in fresh water. Perhaps they will race the next Transpac, but there will certainly be a lot of other races for the new "Alchemy" in between. Forward interior Lookin Aft

04/10/2003