race report
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 Left to right: Red Hawk, Galante, and Siento el Viento start TYC's second midwinter race. ©2012 norcalsailing.com |
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Mid-Month Midwinters February 13, 2012 The second weekend of February featured a variety of midwinter races. Here we take a look at two of them. Berkeley YC Midwinters Race Chair Bobbi Tosse reports: "WOW! Four for four! The 2011-12 BYC Midwinters were gifted with four weekends of no rain and no gales. To be honest, no one can remember if we have ever been this lucky before. On Saturday, they needed a 15-minute postponement in order for a light breeze to manifest itself. "This was enough time for the Olson 30 Hoot to treat the Race Committee with the traditional Valentine chocolate kisses," said Bobbi. The breeze appeared, but was a bit unsettled. "A second postponement became necessary after the first two divisions seemed to be crowding each other at the peg instead of using the nice long line we had offered. So, we moved. But the wind continued to also change direction. Some days you just can’t win. But, the sun came out, the breeze settled down and all 67 starters finished the eight-mile windward/leeward course before 1600. It had turned into just another lovely day on the Bay. "Sunday dawned with a threat. The weatherman warned of rain and heavy wind. However, he was a little vague about the exact arrival time. At race start time, it was very, very light, and again unsettled about direction. At one point, we saw a westerly, a southerly and a southeasterly. We settled on a course that went to the south, but about half way into the race, the promised strong westerly appeared and many of the legs became a fast reach. None of the 24 boats seemed to mind finishing a little early, since by 1430, the cold breeze was on and the promised rain seemed about to hit. The next and final event of this season’s Midwinters is the Trophy Winners Race (aka Champion of Champions) on February 26. "There will be three divisions," explained Bobbi. "The first division will consist of all the first place boats of both days. The winner of this division will be crowned the Champion of Champions. The second division will consist of all the second place winners, and the third division will have the third and fourth place finishers (if any). All trophies will be handed out at a party starting around 1700 at BYC that day." Results are posted at www.berkeleyyc.org. Tiburon YC Midwinters Saturday marked the second of three races for Tiburon YC's series. The wind was light, and from the south – not the northwest as alluded to in the forecast. The race committee sent the two trimarans (the self-described Singlehanded Multihull division) on a triangle course, and seven monohulls on a reachy-reachy single sausage North Bay course. The spinnaker boats were able to carry for about the second half of the 'downwind' leg on a beam reach. Once around the jibe mark north of the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, it was a one-tack beat back to the start-finish line off the clubhouse in Paradise Cay.
The wind direction remained consistent, but the velocity diminished toward the end of the race, making what initially seemed like too short a course the correct choice.
After two races, John Donovan on Millennium Falcon, a Cross 27, and Mark Eastham on Ma's Rover, an F-31, have traded first places in the Multihull division. The third and final race, on March 10, will decide the winner. In monohulls, Lon and Susie Woodrum's Moore 24 Frenzy (spinnaker) and Gerry Gunn and John Sullivan's Hawkfarm Red Hawk (non-spinnaker) have each gotten a first place.
For more info and the results so far, see www.tyc.org/race/race.html.
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