The sun came out for Saturday’s Seaweed Soup midwinter, hosted by Golden Gate YC on the Cityfront, a great place to sail in the winter, except when the wind fails to show up. After a half-hour postponement, a light easterly teased PRO Matt Jones into starting the PHRF divisions, sending them off the ‘wrong’ way, east toward an inflatable ‘windward’ mark. In actuality it was more of a reaching mark, and even more of a drifting mark, courtesy of a light flood. Sensing a change in the wind direction, the RC recalled all the PHRF divisions.

A few boats that were tantalizingly close to rounding the mark with some good competition went ahead and raced each other around before firing up their engines to get back to the starting line. Meanwhile, the RC was sending off the one design divisions the ‘right’ way, toward the filling westerly. Without a pause in the sequence, the PHRF fleets went off toward Blackaller Buoy in their original order after the last of the one designs started.

The westerly proved fickle in strength, making it up to about 12 knots before almost dying again. Usually you’d expect to find fresher wind in the middle, but on Saturday, the better breeze was closer to shore, where the tide was turning into a ebb. Easy choice to short-tack along the Cityfront in favorable wind and current, but coming back on the run, racers had to choose between them. This time, going with the wind seemed to the correct decision.

The ‘slow’ PHRF fleet was spread between 130 and a Cal 20 rating 273. The Cal, Hana Pau, called the RC to check on the course, perhaps hoping it had been shortened. No such luck; only the Catalina 34s got their course shortened. But the persevering Cal managed to finish their whole 6.8 nm anyway.

Complete results are available at www.ggyc.com. The next race in the series will be on December 5.