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52nd NEWPORT BERMUDA RACE TO BE FINAL HURRAH FOR STAN & SALLY HONEY ON ILLUSION
NEWPORT, RI (June 9, 2022)—Speaking with Sally and Stan Honey in the cabin of their Cal 40 Illusion, the conversation is as easy and breezy as the gorgeous day topsides in Portsmouth, R.I. The ocean-racing couple, who’ve racked up many victories racing from California to Hawaii, is preparing for the 52nd Newport Bermuda Race, some 11 days away.
The Honeys, from Palo Alto, Calif., are well advanced in their preps. The crew is set: 1984 Olympic Gold medalist Carl Buchan (Seattle, Wash.), fellow Cal 40 owner Don Jesberg (Belvedere, Calif.) and the redoubtable Jonathan Livingston (Richmond, Calif.) are all experienced and legendary West Coast sailors in their own right.
One week to go before the start, Stan and Sally Honey aboard Illusion in Portsmouth, R.I.
(Sean McNeill photo)
The boat has been stripped of its cruising amenities: the dining table and floorboards are removed, the heavy anchor and chain are gone, and the heater has been disconnected and removed. The safety inspection has occurred.
And then Sally, the two-time Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year, drops the mic. “Basically, we’re looking forward to our last hurrah racing,” says she, who has co-owned the record-setting Cal 40 with Stan for 34 years. “We’re buying a powerboat… transitioning to the dark side.”
What?! The Honeys, one of sailing’s most beloved and revered couples, who anyone would jump at the chance to race with, who came together racing 505s first against and then with each other, who have pushed and prodded each other across the Pacific Ocean to Hawaii many, many times, are retiring to powerboating? Say it ain’t so!
“We’ve sold the boat to my nephew, John Vrolyk,” says Stan, the global record-setting navigator who needs no introduction.
Imagining Illusion without Sally or Stan aboard is a bit like imagining vanilla ice cream without chocolate sauce. Or a Dark ‘n’ Stormy with ginger ale. Or an efficient government. They’re illusory.
The Honeys aren’t the first owners of Illusion. That honor belongs to America’s Cup-winning skipper Bus Mosbacher and legendary Long Island Sound racer Vincent Monte-Sano. Mosbacher and Monte-Sano raced Illusion in its first Bermuda Race in 1966, placing second in class and overall to another Cal 40, Thunderbird.
The Honeys bought Illusion in 1988 after some 20 years of winning championships in the high-performance 505 dinghy. They progressed to Illusion because the “five-oh” was becoming a bit more physical than was needed. “We bought Illusion as a cruising boat because we’d been racing 505s for 20 years. But somehow, we couldn’t stop racing,” says Sally.
They both recounted, laughing, the preparation for their first double-handed race, the 1990 West Marine Pacific Cup, from San Francisco to Kaneohe, Hawaii. It was just the fourth time they sailed the boat together, and the inspection officer wasn’t convinced they were ready.
Stan and Sally Honey's Illusion, surfing in the Pacific (Latitude 38 photo)
“So, the safety inspector comes down to boat,” recalls Stan. “We’d raced a lot and had everything ready for inspection, but we were rewiring the boat and the electrical system wasn’t finished. There were a bunch of wires sticking out. You could twist them together and turn on running lights or anything you needed, but it wasn’t finished yet. So, at the end of the inspection, the guy says, ‘Well, I need some advice. You people have been around a lot. You’ve passed the inspection; you got a check in every box. But, you’re not ready!’”
Despite the inspector’s trepidation, Stan and Sally assured him they were ready and then went out and placed second in class in their first double-handed offshore race.
“That first race was really eye-opening. It was the first time I’d ever been alone on watch in the middle of the night with an autopilot steering,” says Sally, a former sailmaker. “I spent the week before the race building four new spinnakers for the boat.
“The ’96 double-handed race also was very memorable. We sailed really hard in that race; I think we jibed 15 times one night. We pushed really hard and won overall. That was fun from the opposite side of 1990, when we were barely ready.”
Stan recalls crushing the fleet in the 1994 Singlehanded TransPacific Race (San Francisco to Kauai), where he set a course record of 11 days and 10 hours, an elapsed time that is also faster than all Cal 40 efforts in the crewed TransPac Race (a longer course). He also enjoyed pulling a similar horizon job in the 2003 crewed TransPac with Sally.
“The 2003 TransPac with Skip Allan and John Andron was just a hoot,” says Stan. “The boat was perfectly prepared and it was a great year for the race. The crew was unimaginably good. We beat the next Cal 40 by something like half a day. That and the singlehanded race would be my highlights.”
While the memories were flowing freely of past achievements, the Honeys are also squarely focused on the next race, their last race on Illusion—the Newport Bermuda Race. For Sally, it’ll be her third race to Bermuda, following on from 1970 and 2010; for Stan, his seventh race. In 2016 he navigated the 100-footer Comanche to a course record of 34 hours and 42 minutes. It was the second time he navigated a record-breaking entrant, having done the same for Pyewacket (53h:29m) in 2002.
“I suggested to Sally we do one more major race on the boat, the Newport Bermuda Race,” says Stan. “Sally said it’s fully crewed, who would we get to crew for us? I said, imagine the best crew you could imagine, would you go if we could get them? She said sure, but we’re never going to get them.
“Sally decided the best crew in the world would be Carl, Don and Jonathan. So, I sent out an email to all three and within 10 minutes each one said, ‘I’m in.’”
Illusion cruised in Maine for two summers after the 2020 Newport Bermuda Race was cancelled. (Stan and Sally Honey photo)
The march of time leaves no one behind, however, and as Sally and Stan progressed from the 505 to Illusion, now it’s time to make another shift. Although they’re selling Illusion, they won’t be far away from the creator of the breakthrough Cal 40, George Griffith, who also was a good friend. They’ve purchased Griffith’s old powerboat, the 48-footer Sarissa.
“We’d been thinking about transitioning to the dark side for a while, but we never saw anything we liked,” Sally says. “Sarissa is a sailor’s powerboat. She’s 48 feet long, 11 feet wide, weighs 12,000 pounds and goes 20 knots. George died in 2012, but his daughter, Mary, is a good friend of ours. We spent a weekend on the boat with her last summer and we thought, if we go to a powerboat, this would do it.
“It’s not bittersweet. I’m looking forward to it,” Sally says of the end that is nigh. “You can always do more, but we feel like we’ve checked most of the boxes on this boat. This will be the last big race. I’m really happy that it went to Stan’s nephew because one of the conditions of his buying the boat was that whenever we’re in the Chesapeake Bay area we have to go sailing with them. So, it’s not like the boat’s going to disappear from our lives.”
And that’s no illusion.
—Sean McNeill
NEWPORT, RI (June 9, 2022)—Speaking with Sally and Stan Honey in the cabin of their Cal 40 Illusion, the conversation is as easy and breezy as the gorgeous day topsides in Portsmouth, R.I. The ocean-racing couple, who’ve racked up many victories racing from California to Hawaii, is preparing for the 52nd Newport Bermuda Race, some 11 days away.
The Honeys, from Palo Alto, Calif., are well advanced in their preps. The crew is set: 1984 Olympic Gold medalist Carl Buchan (Seattle, Wash.), fellow Cal 40 owner Don Jesberg (Belvedere, Calif.) and the redoubtable Jonathan Livingston (Richmond, Calif.) are all experienced and legendary West Coast sailors in their own right.
One week to go before the start, Stan and Sally Honey aboard Illusion in Portsmouth, R.I.
(Sean McNeill photo)The boat has been stripped of its cruising amenities: the dining table and floorboards are removed, the heavy anchor and chain are gone, and the heater has been disconnected and removed. The safety inspection has occurred.
And then Sally, the two-time Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year, drops the mic. “Basically, we’re looking forward to our last hurrah racing,” says she, who has co-owned the record-setting Cal 40 with Stan for 34 years. “We’re buying a powerboat… transitioning to the dark side.”
What?! The Honeys, one of sailing’s most beloved and revered couples, who anyone would jump at the chance to race with, who came together racing 505s first against and then with each other, who have pushed and prodded each other across the Pacific Ocean to Hawaii many, many times, are retiring to powerboating? Say it ain’t so!
“We’ve sold the boat to my nephew, John Vrolyk,” says Stan, the global record-setting navigator who needs no introduction.
Imagining Illusion without Sally or Stan aboard is a bit like imagining vanilla ice cream without chocolate sauce. Or a Dark ‘n’ Stormy with ginger ale. Or an efficient government. They’re illusory.
The Honeys aren’t the first owners of Illusion. That honor belongs to America’s Cup-winning skipper Bus Mosbacher and legendary Long Island Sound racer Vincent Monte-Sano. Mosbacher and Monte-Sano raced Illusion in its first Bermuda Race in 1966, placing second in class and overall to another Cal 40, Thunderbird.
The Honeys bought Illusion in 1988 after some 20 years of winning championships in the high-performance 505 dinghy. They progressed to Illusion because the “five-oh” was becoming a bit more physical than was needed. “We bought Illusion as a cruising boat because we’d been racing 505s for 20 years. But somehow, we couldn’t stop racing,” says Sally.
They both recounted, laughing, the preparation for their first double-handed race, the 1990 West Marine Pacific Cup, from San Francisco to Kaneohe, Hawaii. It was just the fourth time they sailed the boat together, and the inspection officer wasn’t convinced they were ready.
Stan and Sally Honey's Illusion, surfing in the Pacific (Latitude 38 photo)
“So, the safety inspector comes down to boat,” recalls Stan. “We’d raced a lot and had everything ready for inspection, but we were rewiring the boat and the electrical system wasn’t finished. There were a bunch of wires sticking out. You could twist them together and turn on running lights or anything you needed, but it wasn’t finished yet. So, at the end of the inspection, the guy says, ‘Well, I need some advice. You people have been around a lot. You’ve passed the inspection; you got a check in every box. But, you’re not ready!’”
Despite the inspector’s trepidation, Stan and Sally assured him they were ready and then went out and placed second in class in their first double-handed offshore race.
“That first race was really eye-opening. It was the first time I’d ever been alone on watch in the middle of the night with an autopilot steering,” says Sally, a former sailmaker. “I spent the week before the race building four new spinnakers for the boat.
“The ’96 double-handed race also was very memorable. We sailed really hard in that race; I think we jibed 15 times one night. We pushed really hard and won overall. That was fun from the opposite side of 1990, when we were barely ready.”
Stan recalls crushing the fleet in the 1994 Singlehanded TransPacific Race (San Francisco to Kauai), where he set a course record of 11 days and 10 hours, an elapsed time that is also faster than all Cal 40 efforts in the crewed TransPac Race (a longer course). He also enjoyed pulling a similar horizon job in the 2003 crewed TransPac with Sally.
“The 2003 TransPac with Skip Allan and John Andron was just a hoot,” says Stan. “The boat was perfectly prepared and it was a great year for the race. The crew was unimaginably good. We beat the next Cal 40 by something like half a day. That and the singlehanded race would be my highlights.”
While the memories were flowing freely of past achievements, the Honeys are also squarely focused on the next race, their last race on Illusion—the Newport Bermuda Race. For Sally, it’ll be her third race to Bermuda, following on from 1970 and 2010; for Stan, his seventh race. In 2016 he navigated the 100-footer Comanche to a course record of 34 hours and 42 minutes. It was the second time he navigated a record-breaking entrant, having done the same for Pyewacket (53h:29m) in 2002.
“I suggested to Sally we do one more major race on the boat, the Newport Bermuda Race,” says Stan. “Sally said it’s fully crewed, who would we get to crew for us? I said, imagine the best crew you could imagine, would you go if we could get them? She said sure, but we’re never going to get them.
“Sally decided the best crew in the world would be Carl, Don and Jonathan. So, I sent out an email to all three and within 10 minutes each one said, ‘I’m in.’”
Illusion cruised in Maine for two summers after the 2020 Newport Bermuda Race was cancelled. (Stan and Sally Honey photo)
The march of time leaves no one behind, however, and as Sally and Stan progressed from the 505 to Illusion, now it’s time to make another shift. Although they’re selling Illusion, they won’t be far away from the creator of the breakthrough Cal 40, George Griffith, who also was a good friend. They’ve purchased Griffith’s old powerboat, the 48-footer Sarissa.
“We’d been thinking about transitioning to the dark side for a while, but we never saw anything we liked,” Sally says. “Sarissa is a sailor’s powerboat. She’s 48 feet long, 11 feet wide, weighs 12,000 pounds and goes 20 knots. George died in 2012, but his daughter, Mary, is a good friend of ours. We spent a weekend on the boat with her last summer and we thought, if we go to a powerboat, this would do it.
“It’s not bittersweet. I’m looking forward to it,” Sally says of the end that is nigh. “You can always do more, but we feel like we’ve checked most of the boxes on this boat. This will be the last big race. I’m really happy that it went to Stan’s nephew because one of the conditions of his buying the boat was that whenever we’re in the Chesapeake Bay area we have to go sailing with them. So, it’s not like the boat’s going to disappear from our lives.”
And that’s no illusion.
—Sean McNeill
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Sorry, Philpott, the Bay in the photo is on Oahu's North Shore. Keawa'ula Bay (Yokohama Bay) is on Oahu's western shore, around the other side of Ka'ena Point. But please try again. No one else is. The race winning telltales could be yours. Another photo of the famous Bay, looking northeast:
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BobJ
Alerion 38 "Surprise!"
I think Sam has it right. 70 degrees magnetic at 12 nm puts you about a mile inland, half way between Waimea and Waialua Bays.
Sled once said that for a Hawaii race, Surprise! needed hell-a fans (in the vernacular of the day). They were installed yesterday. As usual I can't post a photo but you know what fans look like.
Sled once said that for a Hawaii race, Surprise! needed hell-a fans (in the vernacular of the day). They were installed yesterday. As usual I can't post a photo but you know what fans look like.
Good one, Sam! Waimea Bay it is. Forward me your snail mail address and the tell-tales will be sent ASAP. BTW, do you own a boat? skipallanatsbcglobaldotnet
Should anyone else want telltales, they are a $1 each which goes into a fund for junior sailing on the MATTHEW TURNER. I usually rig 5, a pair on the P&S lowers, a pair on the uppers (6' off the deck), and one on the backstay. They are 10" long, .5 oz white or red nylon, and with a little tape creativeness, can be made to swivel. Beats the heck out of neck strain looking up at the Windex. If you are driving on a dark, windy, night racing to Hawaii and a windward side tell-tale is pointing just in line with your vision, you are approaching By-The-Lee.
The beauty of tell-tales over instruments is there is no calibration nor lag time. And at night you don't get hypnotized by a needle or number on a glowing, red background. Call me cheap. But it works.
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Should anyone else want telltales, they are a $1 each which goes into a fund for junior sailing on the MATTHEW TURNER.
I usually rig 5, a pair on the P&S lowers, a pair on the uppers (6' off the deck), and one on the backstay. They are 10" long, .5 oz white or red nylon, and with a little tape creativeness, can be made to swivel. Beats the heck out of neck strain looking up at the Windex. If you are driving on a dark, windy, night racing to Hawaii and a windward side tell-tale is pointing just in line with your vision, you are approaching By-The-Lee.
The beauty of tell-tales over instruments is there is no calibration nor lag time. And at night you don't get hypnotized by a needle or number on a glowing, red background. Instead, they align with the stars a bit above the horizon. Stars = good to steer by without using the compass. Call me cheap and old fashioned. But it works. skipallanatsbcglobaldotnet
PS: If you can correctly name the French 2x Vendee Globe sailor in the red jacket in the above photo, you too win free tell-tales. Jackie knows, so she should be able to win her own tell-tales, allowing DRAGONSONG to have her own. Everybody wins on this thread.. Jackie, so who is the fellow in the red jacket?
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Philpott
Cal 2-27 Dura Mater
Oh that is too funny. Every time I whine about not winning something you win it and then give it to me. I still have that used SSS beer glass that you won and gave to me when I fussed. Thank you, and you can keep the tell tales. I look forward to seeing them next time you sail in a race. I'll trade Skip cookies for tell tales. Mr Allan?
I just got in trouble for snacking from a box of cookies left on the kitchen counter. They were delicious until management pointed out they were dog treats.
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Intermission
Member
When I was 2 or 3, I liked the neighbor dog's Milk Bones; several decades later, I decided they had changed the recipe and were no longer as satisfying.
I can't say that I recognize him but I'd venture an educated guess that we are looking at Tanguy de Lamotte.
Correct, PJ. Tanguy, Saskia, and two boys Billy (7) and Tao (4) live and sail out of Sausalito. Telltales coming to you at 1136 Grand St.
Love this!
Thank you, Sam..Your telltales with instructions (!) will be posted Monday next. The official MATTHEW TURNER fund for youth is https://callofthesea.org/donate/scholarships/d Alan Olson, Steve Woodside, and crew are doing good stuff on the TURNER. When Tanguy went out with his two boys, a TURNER's working crew didn't know who he was and asked Tanguy, "do you know how to sail and could you help us furl the main?"
Yup.
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