Just returned from four days of racing and one day of practice on San Francisco bay. And I'm still finding new bruises! Zuni Bear and Short Skirt joined us as the only Fleet 8 entries. All the rest were from the local Fleet 1. Both Rich Bergman and Pete Lufkin had great regattas and were always in the hunt. I think both got bullets over the course of the regatta. We didn't. After a fairly competitive race 1 at Berkeley Circle where the currents are less of a factor - we finished mid pack at 15th out of 31 - we got our butt kicked. Humbled. Crushed. We just didn't have enough local knowledge to be in the game. To give you an idea how much the currents affect things go to http://www.goflow.com/bbs2004.htm. We should have been using this software. We will next year.

The sailing conditions were amazing. We regularly sailed in 20 kts. On Friday we spent a great deal of the second race in 28 kts with gusts to 32 kts! The fleet up there is extremely competitive with no real tail enders. It looked to me like there were plenty of collegiate sailors on the boats. Younger than the crews here. Maybe because the sailing is really physical. We ripped the spinnaker halyard pulley assembly out of the top of the mast on the last takedown on Friday. All of the screws just ripped out of the mast. Another boat did the same on Saturday. We lost a batten from the middle of the main sail on Friday and sailed with a flapping main for most of the second race. On Sunday the lower batten started to back out of the main on the first upwind leg. When we stopped for a fix it flew out so we just abandoned the race rather than wreck the sail. Others had their issues as well. The Perkins boys on Good Timin broke their jib halyard on Thursday. They substituted the spinnaker halyard in mid race so they had to lower the jib each time they needed to use the spinnaker. They still finished fourth! These guys are simply phenomenal sailors. We started next to them several times. Not a good idea! On the second race on Friday four boats got together between the windward mark and the offset. Seems that the wind went from 25 kts to about 8 kts and then back to 25 kts in a few boat lengths. A few guys in the pack raised their spinnakers early in the lighter breeze then promptly broached - all at once! The result was three broken sprit poles and one boat with a hole in the side, The three broken poles were replaced overnight. We were outside of the pack at that mark and just sailed around the whole thing.

On Friday with the breeze in the high twenties we saw 14.5 kts of boat speed on the downwind! The boat would get up to 10 to 12 kts then catch a wave and surf up to a plane. We would run into the back of the wave ahead of us and bury the bow. But even then we were still going 10 kts! We had everyone in the back of the boat to keep the bow from diving more. It was way way cool. I did learn one thing in these conditions; You must be very aware of the wake of the boat in front of you. When you touch it your bow will get pushed way up into nearly a broach or way down into a crash jibe. Crossing the wake is something you do very carefully. Imagine that. Bow wakes from J105s.....

The race legs sailed in the bay are extremely long. Not the usual 1.25 mile courses that we sail. These legs are several miles long (Treasure Island to the south tower of the Golden Gate bridge, for instance) and really beat you up. And there is an island (Alcatraz) in the middle just to make life interesting. We may have gotten our butts kicked but we are all much better sailors for the experience there.

The local fleet and the St. Francis Yacht Club were extremely friendly and welcoming. Tom Coates (Charade) in particular went out of his way to make sure we were well cared for. Over and over again I heard from fleet members in San Francisco that they really wanted SoCal sailors to come up and join them. Obviously, I think this is a great idea. Pete Lufkin sailed with all purpose sails (not SF heavy air sails) and was in the hunt all of the time disproving any notion that you need heavy sails to compete. We really should find some way to make it easy for both fleets to race in either venue. A few suggestions: a bulk rate on boat transport, eased sail regs for visiting boats, eased crew crew requirements of visiting boats, perhaps an arrangement on chartering from one another. Each venue is unique with it's own challenges.

That's all for now.

best,

John Downing