Saturday morning, I get a text from the World Champion: Just looked at the forecast. Should we bring boats or bikes?
Now to be fair to Mike, the forecast was to be very warm, at least by Santa Cruz standards, however, King City and the Salinas Valley was forecast to be over 100 and the ocean as we all know is a few degrees cooler than that. So I feel fairly confident that we will have some wind…. Don Radcliffe and his team set out to lay the course and have us nicely offshore starting close to Mile Bouy. While the sail out is very light, by 1 pm and race start time the wind is into double figures and battle can commence on a well-set course and start line.
Saturday had 3 good races in a breeze that built to around 15 knots by the end of the fantastic tight racing, basically in 2 groups, the World’s top 3 boats having a very tight tussle and then the rest of the fleet enjoying close racing behind them. It was good to see a new boat joining the fray, with Dallas and Joe coming up from SoCal in the new to them 9042. Following racing, Don very kindly supplied Pizza and Beer to the fleet and those that didn’t go home came to my place for a BBQ.
Sunday and the doom-mongers were grousing about the weather again… Fret not, it is Santa Cruz, it will be perfect. And it was. By 12:30 you could trapeze out of the harbor to the race track and at 1 pm start time we had a perfect 12-16 knots of wind on the race course. We mixed it up on Sunday. Those that had finished on the podium at a recent Worlds started on the start gun, but everyone else started on the 1 minute. As Ryan commented, “the dogs were let loose”. This gave for some great racing and boat on boat tactics, with the merge point being the first leeward mark! I think everyone had their moment of glory, with Paul and Makenzie leading a race, as well as Rob/Aaron and Ryan and Will at some point. An experiment well worth repeating.
That was the toughest 8 boat regatta that I have ever sailed. – Mike Martin
But when the dust had settled, the results were the same as January, although a little closer, we could read Mike and Adam’s sail number! The wind did not disappoint, in fact, the weather was about as perfect as it could be, very Goldilocks, not too little, not too much! Really just a shame that the rest of you didn’t make it down (or up) to Santa Cruz.
Text back to Mike: Boat.
| Sail | Boat | Skipper | Yacht Club | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | TotalPos |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.USA 9106 | Mike's Boat | Mike Martin/Adam Lowry | StFYC NHYC | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 10 |
| 2.USA 9202 | IO Integration | Mike Holt/Rob Woelfel | Santa Cruz | 2 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 13T |
| 3. USA 8970 | N = 1 | Parker Shinn/Eric Anderson | YCYC | 1 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 13T |
| 4.USA 8084 | Rob's Olde Boat | Aaron Ross/Rob Waterman | Santa Cruz Yacht Club | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 24 |
| 5.USA 8753 | Rogue One | Ryan NelsonWill Lowe | Encinal Yacht Club | 5 | 5 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 31 |
| 6.USA 7877 | Spiff returns | Steve Anderes/Ian O'leary | SSS | 6 | 6 | 5 | 8/DNC | 8/DNC | 8/DNC | 41 |
| 7.USA 9042 | Dallas Butler/Joe | Morro Bay Yacht Club | 7 | 8/DNF | 8/DNS | 6 | 8/DNF | 6 | 43 | |
| 8.USA 7747 | Paul Tara/Makenzie Cook | Santa Cruz Yacht Club | DNS | 8/DNS | 8/DNS | 6 | 8/DNF | 6 | 46 |
