It took the Cocorin just 33 hours to sail 519km from Naha, Okinawa's capital, to the small Japanese island of Ishigaki.
From there she took a more leisurely pace, taking nine-and-a-half hours and, according to co-skipper Kiyoshi Chinen, about three cases of beer to cover the remaining 85km to the even smaller island of Yonaguni.
PHOTO: DAVID FRAZIER, TAIPEI TIMES
The Cocorin may be the fastest boat in today's Yonaguni-Hualien Friendship Race, a sailing event that will bring 11 boats from Japan's westernmost island to Taiwan.
As Yonaguni is only about 130km off Taiwan's Pacific coast however, most of the yachts taking part have traveled a greater distance in reaching Yonaguni than they will during the upcoming race.
Yonaguni is directly east of Suao, and when the weather is very clear -- usually before typhoons, say the locals -- you can see the mountains of Ilan and Hualien from the island's western headlands.
The Cocorin is favored to close this distance fastest for several reasons.
At 16.15m, the schooner is the biggest boat in the race as well as the only vessel with two masts, both of which are set on pivots that rotate to accommodate wind changes.
She is a custom design by the highly respected New Zealand designer Greg Elliot, and with a healthy breeze, Chinen said she tops out at a wave-chopping 23 knots (43kmh).
Rival yachtsman Eric Pierre Bouveron, a crew member of Lulu, one of Taiwan's two entries in the race, commented, "When [Elliot] designs a boat, he doesn't care about handicap, it's only performance. He does everything to make the boat go as fast as possible."
As if the technical specs of this spaceship on water weren't enough, her helm will be manned by the experienced Chinen and Tomonori Shikina, an Okinawa advertising magnate and the race's organizer.
Among his crew of 12, he has enlisted the services of no fewer than three triathletes. During the race, they are expect to perform like a precision machine. Little wonder they can afford to drink beer.
Sailboat races from Japan's southwestern islands to Hualien have taken place twice before -- in 1998 and 2000 -- but this is the first race to include boats from Taiwan.
There are two of them, Lulu and Motivation. Both are owned by Taiwan entrepreneur Kenny Wang.
Wang owns five sailboats in Taiwan, which is roughly half of all the Taiwan-registered sailboats that exist.
The problem with regulations, in Taiwan, he says, is that they were created about 50 years ago to protect national security, and no one has seen the need to change them since.
Wang purchased the 12.5m Motivation in 1995 and was only able to get her registered about two-and-a-half years later.
He purchased Lulu earlier this year and has not yet registered the craft in Taiwan, so she will fly the Japanese flag during the race.
Lulu may give Wang a shot at winning the Yonaguni-Hualien race after handicaps are figured in.
After all, Lulu won this same race two years ago among competition that included the Cocorin.
"That's why I bought her," said Wang, smiling like a millionaire. Handicaps will have a major effect on the race's outcome.
Each vessel is assigned numerical handicap that is calculated by a complex formula, into which factors including length, displacement, draft and other factors are entered.
These values are then used to give each craft a corrected time for the race.
With a performance line time (PLT) rating of .919, Cocorin has one of the highest handicaps of any sailboat in Japan. Lulu, by comparison has a PLT of .794.
A major setback for Wang, however, will be a lack of familiarity with the heavily streamlined 9m craft.
He and his freshly assembled crew had not sailed the vessel prior to arriving in Yonaguni by airplane last Friday, though they were able to practice on a similar boat in Taiwan.
But help was said to be on the way and Japanese skipper Kousei Monda was scheduled to arrive in Yonaguni yesterday in order to take command of the Lulu during the race.
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