August 2012

17 boats entered the San Francisco YC’s always popular Summer Invitational on August 18/19.  This is the final regatta for the larger one design classes on SF Bay leading into September’s St. Francis Rolex Big Boat Series.  Winds blew 18-24 kts on the Berkeley Circle, such that one of Bruce Stone’s crew, Philipp Berner, a skiff sailor from Germany, suggested we might as well adjust our SF Bay “base setting” to that range since it’s been there for almost every regatta this summer!  In the three races on Saturday, Stone’s Arbitrage team nailed some starts and scored a 1, 1, 2, with Risk close behind, gathering a bullet in the third race due to some excellent downwind sailing, passing Arbitrage by jibing early into even more pressure – hard to believe there was more somewhere, but there was!  The two boats entertained the race committee by engaging in a match racing tacking duel for the last half mile to the upwind finish.  On Sunday, Arbitrage logged another bullet despite shredding a kite on the first downwind leg and changing to the back-up.  Stone was a bit aggressive on the last start and called over early.  After restarting, they clawed their way back from dead last off the line to fifth at the windward mark but were flagged for tacking too close in the zone, so did a 720, potentially losing the podium position for the regatta.  They nailed a shift on the last downwind to work their way back again to fifth by the leeward gate, only to get camped on by the whole world on the last beat, and slid back to 8 in the race. This was good enough and allowed them to edge out Risk by two points for the overall win.

The Aldo Alessio Regatta is one of the highlight events on SF Bay each summer. This year J105 Fleet One opted to skip the Friday ocean race, contesting windward leeward races in the Central Bay and City Front over the weekend. Wind and weather co-operated to provide two ideal days of racing with breeze from about 10 kts to 18 kts both days. Awkward, puffy and more southerly wind direction than usual, coupled with a complex switch from slack to ebb during the race, made for interesting tactical choices on the course. Arbitrage dominated, winning the first and last race and finishing 8 points ahead of Godot, who bested Donkey Jack  on a tie breaker for second. Following-on were Blackhawk in an unaccustomed fourth spot with Alchemy and Roxanne close together in fifth and sixth place.