Hard to believe it, but we’ve learned that Mahdee, a heavy cruising boat, actually sailed in two TransPac races: We heard from various folks that she’d sailed in a TransPac in the 1960’s and then later in an Ancient Mariners Sailing Society TransPac around 1980.

I corresponded with Rich Roberts, Press Officer for Transpac 2007, about the 100 year race history and if Mahdee (under her various names through the years) had ever raced the Transpac. Indeed she did. Rich writes:

“a 53-foot schooner named Privateer owned by David W. Allen of SFYC (and 5 other people named Allen) did sail in 1967 (2nd out of 24 in Class B, 69 boats overall)”

Looking at the .pdf of the race results, we believe Rich meant to say “second from the last in Class B” since her times place her there, not as second in Class B. The classes relate to size so cruising boats as well as racing boats would be together in the class but they would have very different handicaps.

We know that there were light winds in that year’s race and that Mahdee requires heavy winds to do her best. Therefore, we’re amazed she wasn’t at the bottom of the list of all entries!

Read what the Transpac history documents say about the race in 1967… More Here

Click on the Transpac Burgee to see information about the Transpacific Race 2007 and the race history:

Guess what I found while searching for various things “Mahdee”? A Royal Crown Derby plate painted by W E J Dean. It seems that Dean did a series of plates with different yachts in the 1930’s. Mahdee was one of those painted. I would not have thought it was Mahdee had “Mahdee” not been written on the back of the plate before glazing so that the plate was advertised as “Mahdee” by Dean.

I found the plate while web surfing under search terms like “schooner Mahdee”…

Today was a good day in the “history” arena. A few weeks ago I purchased the April, 1931 issue of Yachting from a vintage publication shop and it showed up today in the mail. I was in search of February 1932 which is the issue with Mahdee, but I was very happy to find this issue for Mahdee’s library. April 1931 was the month Mahdee was launched. We expected to see a little note about the launching perhaps. Instead, the Yachting has a full page profile of Alexander W. Moffat. As it turns out, 1931 was the year that he became Commodore of the Cruising Club of America.