race report
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 Opti kids Hoel Menard and Tiberiu Quinn raced on Saturday at RYC. ©2014 norcalsailing.com |
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Small Boat Midwinters
March 4, 2014 The Richmond Yacht Club Midwinters concluded over the weekend with a calm, sunny Saturday and boisterous, cloudy Sunday. RYC tells the story: Saturday’s Midwinters ran parallel to Sail a Small Boat Day. Multihulls sailed outside the breakwater and the Optis off Parent Point. Tiberiu Quinn ran away with the Opti Green class. For the 13-race series he scored a second place or better and garnered only 17 points. Hoel Menard finished the series in second. Dylan Wondolleck of Encinal YC might have given Tiberiu a run for the money except he missed a few races and had to eat four big DNCs and thus finished third. RYC Junior Christopher Pontious was fourth. No one really ran away with the Opti Champs Division; the two Boeger brothers from Encinal finished one and two, and RYC juniors took spots three through six. Nora Galvan-Carty was third, and Raffi Baumann, who was only 8 points back after 11 races, came in fourth just one point out of third.
On Sunday the Midwinters wrapped up with a new weather front moving in. International Canoe sailor Del Olsen said, “My body condition sucked, not unlike the sailing conditions: gusty, leftover chop, shifty, and surprisingly difficult.” Still he won his division and was ahead of archival Stephen Gay for the series. The ICs are always on the ragged edge.
In the over-populated 23-boat Laser fleet, winner David Lapier said he sort of liked the conditions. “A lot of Laser sailors are from Maine,” meaning they didn’t get cold, just wet. “It was one of those days when you could hit a wave and stop dead.” Talk in the Wylie Wabbit fleet was that “Nobody was winning, it's just a question of who was losing most.” It was the maiden journey for Just a Hair, Dan Brandt, Dave Rasmussen, and John Gray's newly rebuilt Wabbit. While they had their fun, including shutting the door right at the finish line on Colin Moore, it was a learning experience. Craig Perez was leading his division in his Banshee until he blew out the top of his rig and had to stop racing. He came into the harbor and was immediately grabbed up by Bill Erkelens on the Wabbit. Bill was in a tooth and nail fight with Tim Russell in the fleet, and afterwards Craig remarked that he was duly impressed with the Wabbit racing citing, “It's the quality of competition… We did some jibe sets with boats right on our tail. We didn't seem to make any mistakes, yet we only beat Tim by 2 points and only got one gun today." Bill Erkelens joked his hacksaw may have helped that Banshee mast come tumbling down.
Mike Quinn, who didn’t make all the El Toro races because of a broken rudder said that Art Lange and Fred Paxton battled each other valiantly. Fred won out in the end with Art in second and Buzz Blackett third. Buzz had an awesome day thanks to a new sail from Will Paxton. The crash boat work was outstanding, and they had plenty of action with broken booms, rudders and egos. Between races everyone was hiding behind a moored barge that was close to the start line. The breeze was near the Toro’s top end, and all the boats in the channel contended with commercial traffic. Wisely the race committee saved one race from a commercial traffic abandonment by finishing at the weather mark.
On the Green course Byte sailor Gail Yando said it was breezy enough, but also said, “The old guard is really proud of the newbies. Particularly Claire Arbour and Dierdre Collins. All doing good moves and good tactical racing. Dierdre was always up fighting for her spot.” Gail must be tuckered out. “I’ll sleep well tonight from following Michele Logan around.” Gail did edge Michele out for a bullet, otherwise it was Michele’s day with a first place.
For complete results in the many classes, see www.richmondyc.org.
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