The Great Vallejo Race: Saturday

May 3, 2010

Light winds make one savor the spoils of victory even more (and make defeat even more bitter). Saturday's Great Vallejo Race had the ups and downs of wind holes popping up out of nowhere and the westerly finally filling around 1400 with 15-18 knots from the west. All with a good flood tide to bring everyone to Vallejo in plenty of time for the party.

It wasn't a great day for sportboats, like these two Open 5.70s, Boracic and Semiaquatic. ©2010 norcalsailing.com

With 216 boats racing in 24 divisions, the start sequence extended for over an hour while the conditions changed as the morning progressed. With the westerly filing in late, the boats that started near the end had the biggest gain as the fleets compressed in the holes. One of the fastest boats overall on corrected time was the Cal 20 Can O'Whoopass; skipper Richard von Ehrenkrook and crew Paul Sutchek have been on a hot streak. The grumbling at the Vallejo Yacht Club docks after the race was mainly from the fast boats saying it wasn't their year, with speed-challenged boats getting upper hand. But Richard on The Can has his own take: "We worked really hard the whole race, setting and dowsing the chute, tacking and jibing on every shift, and avoiding brown water (indicating an ebb current). To say we just walked away with it doesn't do us justice."

The crew on Peter Stoneberg's Formula 40 catamaran Shadow hiked out BMW Oracle style. ©2010 Erik Simonson/www.h2oshots.com

George Ellison on the Schumacher 30 Shameless, which won the SF30 division, remarked, "It was certainly better conditions for the slower boats. We had an okay start, but with the light wind and strong current pushing away from the line, a lot of boats were way late to the starting line." In fact some of the boats were ten minutes late for their start. And a couple of them tangled up with the RC boat.

Motorcycle Irene got swept into the RC's catamaran at the start, and it took her 40 minutes to get free. She still finished only 10 minutes behind the other Express 27s. ©2010 Sergei Zavarin/http://ultimate-yachtshots.smugmug.com

The Mini 6.5 Daisy Cutter behind Angel Island. ©2010 norcalsailing.com

Jeannette, Ohana, and Q at the Brothers. ©2010 BAMA

The westerly filled in very suddenly in San Pablo Bay. Sweltering in the May sunshine, some crews had removed gloves, PFDs, shoes - when suddenly their spinnaker sheets were burning through their bare hands. The fetch picked up and boats started rolling in it, challenging drivers to keep control downwind.

Continue on to part two, Sunday.

For more photos, see www.h2oshots.com, http://ultimate-yachtshots.smugmug.com and SlackwaterSF. There's also a video of the Vallejo YC raft-up at www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0X_vayXJZA.