April 15, 2013

April 13-14 proved to be a fantastic weekend of racing for the lucky folks in Berkeley Yacht Club’s 41st Wheeler Regatta. There was some wind, some sun, some light flat places, and some fun lumpy places (fun, being a relative term, of course).

Fifty-one boats enjoyed two separate events on Saturday: the City of Berkeley Regatta  (three divisions of ‘smaller’ boats sailing three races on the Olympic Circle) and the Wheeler Regatta  (four divisions of ‘larger/faster-rated’ boats racing three races mostly in the Central Bay). The wind was on and off and sometimes from “wrong” directions, but all in all the racers had a great time.

A summary of the winners by Division:
      Wheeler Division A
             1.   Bodacious+,  John Clauser’s 1D48
             2.   Jeanette, Henry King’s Frers 40
             3.   Ohana, Steve Hocking’s Beneteau 45f5
      Wheeler Express 37                                   
             1.    Expeditious, Bartz Schneider
             2.    Golden Moon, Bill Bridge and Kame Richards
             3.    Stewball, Bob Harford
      Wheeler Division C
             1.     Arch Angel, Bryce Griffith’s Antrim 27
             2.     Mintaka4, Gerry Brown’s Farr 38
             3.     Rusalka, Zhenya Kirueshkin-Stepanoff’s Melges 24
       Wheeler Division D
             1.     Kwazy, Colin Moore’s Wylie Wabbit
             2.     Mr. McGregor, Kim Desenberg’s Wabbit
             3.     Weckless, Tim Russell’s Wabbit

The winner of the Wheeler perpetual trophy was Expeditious.  (Pressure Drop has a picture of Expeditious.)

       City of Berkeley Olson 25
             1.     Shadowfax, Mark Simpson
             2.     Synchronicity, Steve Smith
             3.     Balein, Dan Coleman
       City of Berkeley Division E
             1.     Achates, Robert Schock’s Newport 30
             2.     TMC Racing, Michael Whitfield’s J/24
             3.     Mojo, Paul Weisman’s Ranger 33
       City of Berkeley Santana 22
             1.     Byte Size, Anna Aldercamp
             2.     Meli'ki, Deb Fehr
             3.     Carlos, Jan Grygier

The winner of the City of Berkeley perpetual trophy was Shadowfax. Tom Bates, the mayor of the City of Berkeley was on hand for the trophy presentation Saturday night.

Balein chases Shadowfax in BYC's Wheeler Regatta. ©2013 Patrick Hind-Smith

By Sunday, the weather had changed a bit. The westerly came in prior to the first start of the 10.1-mile pursuit race. The course was from FOC on the Berkeley Circle, out to Harding Rock, over to Blossom Rock, down to a temporary leeward mark and back to the finish at FOC. The flood was on full blast which gave all the racers a challenge at Harding. (I heard that a couple of boats tried to round the mark more than four times before they were successful!) The wind was up, the waves increased, and the JS9000 JetStream was able to jump on the wake of Bodacious+ almost all the way from Harding to Blossom. 

This race is traditionally a ‘big’ boat race, and, at first glance, yesterday looked to be no exception. However, as we on Race Committee watched, we could see that there was this one small boat quite far in front on the run from Blossom to the leeward mark. Gradually, yard by yard, wave by wave, the bigger boats began to close in. It looked a bit like watching PacMan. After the rounding, the distance between the little boat and the bigger boats got smaller and smaller. Finally, the gun went off and the little boat made it! The first five boats finished within 1 minute, 12 seconds. Super fun for the RC folks! The finish order:
       1.     TMC Racing, Michael Whitfield’s J/24
       2.     Stewball, Bob Harford’s Express 37
       3.     JetStream, Daniel Alvarez’s JS9000
       4.     Bodacious+, John Clauser’s 1D48
       5.     Jeanette, Henry King’s Frers 40

The full results are up on the BYC Wheeler page  www.berkeleyyc.org.

- Bobbi Tosse, Berkeley Yacht Club