You couldn’t ask for more beautiful weather to kick off November, or any other month for that matter. The warm temps had the Jacks, scurrying around on foredecks and in cockpits, sweating like they men they are, while the nine Jills stayed cool at the helms of their craft.

The occasion was the Jack & Jill + 1, a triplehanded race for women skippers on the Estuary, hosted by Alameda’s Island Yacht Club. The event serves to ease the transition between the summer season and the midwinters, which start in just two weeks. While some boats are owned and driven by women all the time, this race also gives female crews/wives/girlfriends the opportunity to hog the helm when they might otherwise be shooed off to the pit or (most dire!) the rail. Island YC also hosts the full-crew women skippers’ Sadie Hawkins Regatta, scheduled for February 27 in 2010.

Competition was polite, with slow boat speeds giving crews plenty of time to duck starboard boats, tack to give sea room, and so forth. The race committee clocked the breeze at 5-10 knots from the west, pretty typical Estuary conditions.

In Division B (PHRF 150+), Melissa Litwicki on the J/24 Downtown Uproar took first to finish, first to finish on corrected time, and a prize for traveling the furthest (from Richmond).

Prizes for top finishers included of a bottle of wine for the Jills, a beer for the crew, and a plastic pail for the Jacks. The complete results can be seen at www.iyc.org.

Many thanks to Fred Fago, who was innocently walking down the dock to his boat to change the oil when he was enlisted by the race committee. Since he’s seldom without his camera, he took a few photos and kindly shared them with us. It’s all about timing.