Ok… the spray has settled and the wounds are healing. The muscles are not screaming anymore and the boats are rinsed off and back in their stables. Congratulations to all the winners – and all the competitors – in the 2008 Rolex Big Boat Series in San Francisco.
There were over 100 boats competing on the Bay last week, and J World was well represented. Congrats to Travis, who was aboard the winning boat in IRC Division C, Eugenie who was coaching the J/145 Raincloud to a fourth place overall in IRC Division B. Yours truly was skippering J World, our trusty J/120 to a third place in our class. I was lucky enough to have a great team that dragged me around the course and made things happen smoothly: from the left, Kevin, Ann, Rebeca, Taylor, Jeff, Chris, Andy, Paul, Adam, Patti, and Wayne… thank you for making this a great event.
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And thank you to the local J/120 Fleet… I have said repeatedly what a fantastic group this is. There is an absolutely unparalleled amount of camaraderie, healthy competition, and mutual respect with this group of sailors that presents such a refreshing change from the scenes and fleets that can devolve into petty and trivial squabbles. For example, the morning of the first race, one of the top competitors in the J/120 fleet (and a favorite to win the event) realized that in the chaos of getting ready, they had left their big class kite at home, with no chance of getting it before the start of Race 1. Two phone calls later, that team had two replacement sails to use from their competitors. Pretty cool. The group is incredibly welcoming to new fleet members… so if you are interested in checking out the group as either a potential skipper or a crew, I HIGHLY recommend it!
And on the water, the racing is tight, and I mean *tight*! After something like four consecutive wins, Mr. Magoo was finally beaten by a great showing from Barry Lewis and his team on Chance. But it didn’t come easy. Almost didn’t come at all. It was decided on the last leg of the last race of the series, during one of the most fun days of sailing I have had in a long time… let me tell you a story…
So Magoo is winning the series, with Chance in second. To win, Chance would have to beat Magoo and put a boat between them in the last race. Well, for much of the race, we were that boat. Chance got out to an early lead, and we were able to sneak into second, but Magoo charged hard and pulled into third… and so it went with Chance holding us back, but not so far back that Magoo would get by, while Magoo slugged away at us.
When our backstay ram got an air bubble in it and we started the last beat with no rig on, we got passed by Magoo and Grace Dances… bad news for Chance. And so at the final half of the final beat, we had a four way tacking duel…. we would tack, Grace would tack on us, Magoo would tack to keep Grace back, and Chance would tack to squash Magoo (remember, they had to push Magoo to third while keeping the lead).
We managed to get by Grace, and we all rounded the final weather mark hot on each others heals, Chance, Magoo, J World, Grace…. kites went up, and Chance made the big move…. wind check! Up hard came four J120s, kites luffing, all boats overlapped… but Magoo worked a bit forward on us, and suddenly we had a lane down. We bore away sharply, Taylor and Chris whaled on the spin sheet so the kite filled in a snap, and we were off towards the finish. Chance saw us break for it, and spun down, with Magoo and Grace right behind. We drag-raced Chance all the way to the finish… in some photos, we look launched, and I think we had them for a bit, but they got a bit more current relief and a sweet puff to take us at the line by a couple of feet, winning the race, and winning the regatta…
Anyway, that was really fun stuff. And look at what a fine day for sailing it was. This place is phenomenal. Great sailing by all parties… and congratulations to Barry and the whole Chance team…
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