Don Reiman and the 1997 Trans-Pacific Yacht Race
Reiman, 63, has whale of sail (Long Beach Press-Telegram, August 20, 1997)
For half a century, Don Reiman had dreamed of sailing to Hawaii. But at age 63, his chances of fulfillment seemed dead in the water.
Then he got a phone call. "Jerry called me at 8 in the morning and I was on the dock by 10," recalled Reiman with a satisfied smile surrounded by a scruffy beard. "That was a dream I'd always had, ever since I was a kid sailing Alamitos Bay. But the reality far surpassed the dream."
Reiman of Los Alamitos served on the crew of the Ralphie, the overall winner of the recent San Pedro-to-Honolulu Transpac yacht race. Called up by Long Beach skipper Jerry Montogmery, Reiman was a real last-minute replacement when another member of the eight-man crew couldn't make the trip due to his job.
"Everything was last-minute with this race," added John Latiolait, co-skipper and owner of the Ralphie. "Our whole program was rush, rush, rush. We didn't even know we were going to race until six weeks before we left. We were literally running electrical wiring on our way up to the starting line."
Once on the ocean, Ralphie kept up that hectic pace. The 50-foot Santa Cruz sailboat made the 2,250-mile trip in only nine days, 5 hours and 26 seconds -- the fastest clocking ever in 117 Transpac sailings by a boat of her class and size.
Although the 70-foot Pyewacket finished Transpac in a record seven days, 15 hours and 24 minutes, Ralphie won the overall race due to a complicated handicapping system that takes into consideration a boat's individual dimensions. A much larger yacht is expected to go much faster than a smaller boat. Ralphie's corrected time beat Pyewacket by half a day.
Besides skippers Montgomery and Latiolait, the crew included Jim McLeod and David Thompson of Long Beach, Don Warner of Huntington Harbour, Steve Rossi of San Diego and Scott Jones of Los Angeles in addition to Reiman.
The crew had plenty of experience. Montgomery first sailed Transpac in 1981; this was his fifth race in the series that runs every other year. Crew members Rossi and Thompson have each sailed seven Transpacs.
Members of the Ralphie's crew gathered Friday night at Alamitos Bay Yacht Club, home base for the boat and its sailors. Dressed in matching blue aloha shirts, they were there to celebrate and welcome home the sailors who brought Ralphie back to Long Beach.
After sailing halfway across the Pacific, Montgomery, Thompson and Reiman sailed Ralphie back to Alamitos Bay. Latiolait's father, Phil, who flew over to welcome the yacht to Honolulu, also made the cruise back.
"I not only got to sail to Hawaii once, but I made the roundtrip," said Reiman. The sail back to Long Beach took 16 days.
The group's ages range more than three decades; Reiman and Montgomery at 63, MacLeod at 31. Their professions cover a great deal of territory, too. Montgomery is an attorney for the city of Los Angeles; Latiolait is a civil engineer with the City of Long Beach.
Their common bond is sailing. "People have a misconception about our sport," said Reiman. "All sorts of people sail. We had an old boat and mostly an old crew," he added with a wink. "But we won."
Reiman, a former Catholic priest who now teaches fourth grade, had been bugging Montgomery for years to be part of his crew, just in case he was thinking of sailing Transpac again.
"I kept asking him, 'Don't you need a chaplain?' " Reiman said. "They said to win that race you need to be good and have good luck. Well, I sure prayed a lot, so I take responsibility for some of the good luck."
Reiman prayed extra hard at one point. Some 1,100 miles from land, a pin in Ralphie's steering controls broke. For four hours, they struggled to fix it with no spare parts. The crew had visions of the sailboat listing helplessly in mid-Pacific without a rudder or, more specifically, a tiller.
"I thought at that point, 'We'll be out here a long, long time,' " said Latiolait. "We ended up sticking a screwdriver in for the pin and made that work," said Montgomery. "That saved the day. The wind was blowing so hard, we only lost about an hour's time."
For most of the trip, Ralphie plowed through the waves like its namesake. The yacht was christened after the University of Colorado's buffalo mascot, Ralphie.
Before its name change to Ralphie, the yacht was called Upbeat. In 1987, Latiolait sailed Transpac aboard Upbeat, finishing several days slower. "When we got to Hawaii, we wanted to change the name to Beat Up," he said.
Ten years later, the cruise was much smoother. "We traveled at 11 knots most of the time," said Montgomery.
Such speed blasts water under the hull with thunderous noise. "It sounds like jet engines the full time," said Latiolait. "You get used to wearing ear plugs to try and drown it out."
Added Rossi, the boat's navigator: "The whole trip is an exercise in sleep deprivation. I think I averaged maybe three hours a night."
There wasn't much to see at night. "The whole sky was black, the ocean was black, no stars, nothing," said Rossi, whose job it was to figure out where they were.
But Rossi kept Ralphie on course. Off Oahu, he predicted that Ralphie would cross the finish line at 3 p.m. She sailed past Waikiki at 26 seconds past 3 o'clock.