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When a Fiasco Is a Success

Welcome to the big party in San Francisco.

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San Francisco was a busy place this weekend. While thousands waited in line at the Embarcadero to celebrate one sport, hundreds more lined up along the Marina to compete in another: the biggest — and oddest — yacht race of the year, and they didn’t even have to go through security.

Golden Gate Yacht Club’s buoy X marks the start. Cal 20s and a Yankee Dolphin started the Three Bridge Fiasco pursuit race first, at 9 a.m. The Cal 20s started from east to west toward Blackaller Buoy near the Golden Gate, while Dick Loomis and John Amen sailed the Yankee Dolphin Old School east toward the Bay Bridge.

© 2016

The Three Bridge Fiasco pursuit race kicks off the Singlehanded Sailing Society’s season of Bay and ocean races for shorthanded sailors. SSS race chair Allen Cooper reports that 369 boats registered, 325 started, and 289 finished. Not bad for a Fiasco!

This year’s entries broke last year’s record, as shown in purple.

© Jibeset Associates
As is often the case, Red Rock, just south of the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, was the trickiest mark to get around. As Sail Tactics predicted on Friday, a huge wind hole bested many a racer in the North Bay and Southampton Shoals area.

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©Latitude 38 Media, LLC

By the time the bulk of the clockwise fleet reached their third mark, Treasure Island, the breeze and the flood current had built, making for a bouncy short-tack beat up the Cityfront to the finish. Some singlehanded racers found themselves over-canvased and just had to tough out the mid-teens breeze.

David Ross and Javier Jerez on the Express 34 Traveler and Rafi Yahalom and Ron Kitowsky on the Corsair Sprint Lookin’Good were indeed lookin’ good abreast of Berkeley when a fresh westerly filled in from the south.

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©Latitude 38 Media, LLC

"The first finisher, shortly after 2 p.m., was Bill Erkelens’ Wylie Wabbit Jack, which crossed from the east to west," reports SSS treasurer Kristen Soetebier, who worked the radio on the race deck all day. "The first singlehander was Punk Dolphin, Jonathan Livingston’s Wylie 39. I believe he came in from the north. The first multihull was the Extreme 40 Smart Recruiters, from the east. The biggest news was that there was wind enough for most folks to get around the course. Most of them went to Blackaller first, then Red Rock, then Treasure Island, finishing from the east." Finishers can come from any of three directions because they can start in either direction and round the three marks in any order.

The intrepid race committee crunched numbers all weekend and posted (very) preliminary results this morning. See Jibeset. Awards for top finishers and shirts for all participants will be handed out at the trophy meeting on Wednesday, February 10, at Oakland YC in Alameda. Expect to also hear the winners tell how they did it.

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