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Corinthian Mids

Yucca and Emily Carr joust their way toward Blossom.

© Erik Simonson

The cold and dreary winter weather broke just in time for the 60th Corinthian Midwinters to get underway this weekend under sunny skies and temps that seemed to get up into at least the high-60s. One hundred and ten boats in 12 handicap divisions and 26 boats in four one design divisions made it to the starting line.

Scott Easom’s Farr 30 Eight Ball rolled over PHRF 2 with a pair of bullets over the weekend. Here they’re shooting for some of the stragglers on PHRF 1.

© Erik Simonson

After a short postponement, racing got underway on Saturday with most of the larger-boat classes being sent on a Bay tour that started at Knox. After a short fetch to Yellow Bluff, they headed down the Bay toward Blossom. To their dismay, the Central Bay was the site of a battle royal between the northerly that had carried the first starters to Yellow Bluff, a weak southerly, and a weak westerly. The first few classes reached Alcatraz only to park up in a big transition zone. While many boats carried enough breeze to eventually become even with the southern tip of Alcatraz on their first try, a combination of the breeze shutting off completely and the massive, runoff-fueled ebb meant that entire classes were getting flushed all the way back to the northern tip of the island no matter which side of the Alcatraz they tried to pass. It took some boats multiple tries to get past the island and down to Blossom, and those who were able to successfully negotiate that part of the course ended up getting pretty launched. From Blossom it was an easy fetch up to Southampton Shoal in a 8- to 12-knot northerly, before a primarily starboard-tack beat to a race deck finish off Corinthian YC.

The fleets fight past Alcatraz on Saturday.

© Erik Simonson

Sunday’s race started off much the same way, albeit minus the sun, which had a hard time penetrating the thin carpet of valley fog that accompanied the 8- to 15-knot northerly breeze. Sailing the same course as Saturday, the fleets found that getting past Alcatraz was a much easier task with the breeze holding pretty much the entire way around the race course. After a little over a half-hour, the bigger boats were already around Blossom; the day before, it had taken them about two hours! The results are already up on the Corinthian YC’s Midwinters page. With some tight leaderboards, there should be some good battles next month.

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