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race report
Faster Faster
Suzanne Lee on Dave Ross's Merit 25 Faster Faster (green and white spinnaker) kept the pressure on the Laser 28 Stink Eye, while Deb Fehr in her Santana 22 Meliki (pink and white spinnaker) kept the pressure on Faster Faster. In the background: the windward mark rounding. ©2014 norcalsailing.com
Sunny Sadie

February 24, 2014

Sunday's shades of summer included warm sunshine on the Oakland-Alameda Estuary and a thick bank of fog which blanketed the Slot all the way to Berkeley (see our previous story).

Dragon boat
Houseboats and dragon boats – the scene on the Estuary on a sunny Sunday. ©2014 norcalsailing.com

Looking at the flags at Alameda Marina around noon before the start of Island YC's Sadie Hawkins Race for women skippers, observant sailors noticed more south than usual in the wind direction, and wondered if it would be a one-tack beat/spinnaker reach kind of race. By the time of the start at 1300, however, the wind had clocked around to the usual northwesterly direction, perfectly aligned with the Estuary, making for a beat up to the windward mark up by KTVU and a dead-downwind run to the leeward mark by Union Point. A short beat back to the start-finish line off Svendsen's dock completed the course.

Nice Turn
Jocelyn Nash helms the Cal 2-29 Nice Turn while the crew gets the pole ready for the mark rounding. ©2014 norcalsailing.com

The race committee chose a course that could have either one or two laps, depending on how fast the boats made it around the first time, but a second lap would have put everyone past the two-hour time limit, so one lap was it. Better to be left wanting more than the opposite!

Hellion
Yvette Zhu sailed the Olson 30 Hellion. ©2014 norcalsailing.com

Mercury
Amy Cole and Paul Mueller sailed the Mercury Loco 2. ©2014 norcalsailing.com

Meliki
Watch out, here comes Meliki, charging to the finish. Can they correct out over the earlier finishers? ©2014 norcalsailing.com

The skippers and crews of the first three boats to finish, Stink Eye, Faster Faster, and Meliki waited with anticipation for the math to be done. As it turned out, Faster Faster won by 22 seconds on corrected time, and Meliki was only 19 seconds out of second place in the spinnaker division. Little Loco 2 won the non-spinnaker division.

Women skippers
Some of the women skippers. Back row, left to right: Dawn Chesney, Wuvulu, Islander Bahama 30; Deb Fehr, Meliki; Christine Weaver, Stink Eye. Front row: Amy Cole, Loco 2; Judith Maurier, Scrimshaw, Alerion 28; Suzanne Lee, Faster Faster. ©2014 norcalsailing.com

You can find complete results at www.iyc.org.

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