It’s not often that a boat designer is reunited with his record-breaking yacht 33 years after selling her. But that’s what happened last year when Bill Lee got a phone call asking if he’d be interested in repurchasing Merlin—the first Santa Cruz 70 (21.3m) he designed and built. Merlin is credited, primarily under Lee’s watch, with breaking just about every ocean-racing record on the West Coast in the 1970s and ’80s. Last October Merlin was trucked from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where she was owned and campaigned by Jerome Sullivan, back to her native home in Santa Cruz, California.
Lee is largely recognized for putting Santa Cruz on the ocean-racing map, developing some of the first ultralight-displacement boat designs, or ULDB, “sleds.” These boats were long, narrow, and lightweight, purpose-built to take advantage of the downwind surfing conditions in the Transpac Race from California to Hawaii.
Ross Tibbitts Last year, yacht designer and builder Bill Lee reacquired one of his most significant builds, the 68′ (20.7m) Merlin, which, beginning in 1977, set numerous records in the Transpac Race.
Lee’s acumen for designing sleds did not develop overnight. At the youthful age of 26, with a degree in mechanical engineering from California Poly-technic State University, Lee moved to Santa Cruz, leaving an engineering job in Southern California. He quickly fell into the local racing scene on Monterey Bay, and two years later, in 1970, he built his first boat, Magic, which he envisioned as a 30‘ (9.1m) 505. Lee employed a new technology—sandwiching balsa core inside two skins of fiberglass—to make Magic as light as possible. This resulted in a scant displacement of 2,700 lbs (1,223 kg). Magic went on to win the Monterey Bay Series and the Monterey–Santa Barbara race.
It was clear to Lee that he had an opportunity to do something momentous during the 1977 Transpac. Taking design cues from his past creations and infusing them with narrower, shallower, and longer lines like those on Ragtime, he developed the ultimate ocean-racing yacht that he hoped would significantly alter the Transpac’s Barn Door (first-to-finish) record of 9:09:06:48, held by Mark Johnson’s Windward Passage since 1971. (See Ted Jones’s “Passage Maker” in PBB No. 151.)
Scraping together whatever money he could find, Lee famously built Merlin in an oversized chicken coop in the hills above Santa Cruz for just under $50,000. The 68‘ Merlin, his blueprint for what would become the Santa Cruz 70, was launched in February. “That first sail had Tom Blackaller and Dee Smith—both sailmakers for North Sails out of San Francisco—and several proposed Transpac crew on board,” says Don Snyder (Merlin’s navigator in 1977). “That first spinnaker set was truly amazing.”
By all accounts, the 1977 Transpac was a dramatic race. There were five potential contenders for overall winner: Windward Passage and Kialoa III were the two old-school heavyweights, and Drifter, Ragtime, and Merlin were the newer lightweights.
“This was the perfect race for Merlin and her crew,” recalls Snyder. “The last two full days we logged 305 miles each day—a Transpac record at that time.”
A C-135 military aircraft with a photographer on board spotted Merlin on her final approach to Molokai Channel. “The wind was about 20 knots, sky overcast, and the photo showed Merlin half submerged as the bow dipped and a wave swept the foredeck, with whitewater rolling back over the cabintop,” says Snyder. “We watched the C-135 (head east) and then sighted Drifter about five miles back. We finished at 21:01:45 HST, and Drifter finished at 21:19:26 HST.” Merlin finished the race almost a full day ahead of Windward Passage’s previous record at 8:11:01:45. Her Transpac record would not be surpassed for two decades until Roy Disney’s Santa Cruz 70 turbo sled, Pyewacket, took a sizable chunk of time off the record in 1997, finishing in 7:15:24:40. More winning days were still to come, and in 1995 Merlin was the overall winner of the Transpac, finishing in 8:22:41:48.
Over the years she was retrofitted with a carbon fiber mast, swept spreaders, a reconfigured cabintop, and a turbo scoop on her transom. Although well maintained, Merlin had spent the past several years in storage.
Today, Lee is searching for a new keel to replace the canting keel system installed in 1997, so he can race her in the 2017 Transpac, the 40th anniversary of her record-breaking race in 1977. There is little else to do for her recommissioning. The only remaining problem is one that has existed since before she was built: what’s the fastest route to Hawaii?
