Record sailing voyage wrapping up in S.F. SAILING

The yacht Maserati sailed from New York on New Year's Eve and is expected to reach San Francisco on Friday or Saturday. The yacht Maserati sailed from New York on New Year's Eve and is expected to reach San Francisco on Friday or Saturday. Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Record sailing voyage wrapping up in S.F. 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

A 70-foot sailboat named after a sports car and skippered by a top Italian sailor is on the last leg of a grueling record-breaking race from New York to San Francisco.

The racing yacht Maserati is expected under the Golden Gate Bridge late Friday or sometime Saturday depending on the wind. If all goes well, it will be a triumphant end of a 13,225-mile voyage around Cape Horn at the tip of South America that is considered one of the toughest sailing challenges in the world.

The Maserati's skipper is Giovanni Soldini, 47, who has sailed around the world alone and holds several sailing records. He once rescued Isabelle Autissier, a personal friend and another experienced sailor from certain death when her boat capsized in huge seas 1,900 miles west of Cape Horn.

Soldini and a crew of eight aboard the Maserati are expected to set a record for single-hulled sailing vessels on the New York-to-San Francisco passage.

The Maserati sailed from New York on New Year's Eve and if it arrives Friday it will have made the voyage in 46 days, much faster than the record of 57 days, three hours and two minutes set by the Aquitane Innovation in 1998.

"This is a big deal," said Andy Turpin, managing editor of Latitude 38, the Marin sailing magazine. "This is one of the most difficult sailing records."

Huge challenge

The late Tom Blackaller, a famous Bay Area sailor, once compared the course to climbing Mount Everest or swimming the English Channel.

The voyage around Cape Horn is historically significant since it was the route taken by the clipper ships during the California Gold Rush. The trip usually took 200 days, but in 1854 the famous clipper Flying Cloud, made it in 89 days, a record that stood for 130 years.

"I wouldn't do it differently, but I wouldn't do it again," said Warren Luhrs, who broke the Flying Cloud's record in 1989 aboard the racing yacht Thursday's Child.

Though the America's Cup race is more famous, the Cape Horn route is longer and more difficult. It is the difference between a sprint and an ultramarathon.

The America's Cup race, to be held this summer on San Francisco Bay, involves high-tech, super-fast, multi-hulled vessels that will sail a marked course in 45 minutes; the race from New York takes weeks and involves a voyage through some of the most difficult seas in the world.

"America's Cup is a tactical race around buoys," said Turpin, "The New York-to-San Francisco race has a lot of variables: sea conditions, weather, passing through the light winds of the doldrums in both the Atlantic and Pacific."

International crew

Soldini has a multinational crew. There are a couple of Italians, but the crew also has Spanish, French, Chinese and American nationals on board.

The navigator, Ryan Breymaier, 37, is an American who learned to sail on Chesapeake Bay. Breymaier has had an important role in helping to chart the voyage around storm systems and away from areas of high atmospheric pressure and little wind.

So far, Soldini and his crew have been lucky. The famously tricky weather around Cape Horn was favorable for the passage. The first month, Soldini wrote in his log, "simply flew by between surfing the waves, storms ... sunsets, dawns, amazing moons, wind and sea."

However, the voyage began to wear on the crew on the long Pacific haul northbound from Cape Horn. They ran low on food and, though hundreds of miles off the California coast, could almost smell the land.

In the last few days, the winds died away, slowing the boat. "The winds are unstable," Soldini wrote, "we have to tack continuously. These last miles will be very hard."

On Thursday morning, when the Maserati was just more than 300 miles in a straight line from San Francisco, the wind changed. "Finalmente, un po' di vento" he wrote in Italian, "Finally, a little wind."

The Italian consulate in San Francisco plans a warm welcome for the Maserati when it arrives, including a reception at the Italian consulate. Italian consul general Mauro Battocchi calls Soldini "a sailor's sailor, arguably the greatest long-distance ocean sailor in the world today ... in the great tradition of Christopher Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci."