Crew You Regatta
In addition to the usual roster of midwinter racing this weekend will be OPBYC’s Crew You Regatta. The founder of OPBYC (Other People’s Boats Yacht Club), Jasper Van Vliet, is a Bay Area J/24 sailor. "We figured we were the smart ones (non-boatowners)," he explains. "Sail for free any time we want on almost any boat we want — but you don’t get to drive the boat very much."
To correct the lack of helm time for crewmembers, Van Vliet, along with fellow J/24 sailors, organized the first Crew You Regatta in 2013. The fourth edition will be held this Sunday, December 11, in the Shouthampton Shoals racing area west of Richmond, starting at 11 a.m.
"There will be fanciful mark slingin’ courtesy the Heyalice team, ample beer grabbing, signature hull tipping and toppling, plus more spinny set pops than there are towel snaps in an NFL locker room," writes photographer Martha Blanchfield, who will produce video clips from the onboard the Bertram 20 Heyalice, to be posted on her blog at www.renegadesailing.com and on Facebook.
Sunday is predicted to be more meteorologically benign than Saturday this weekend, so rookie skippers shouldn’t have too rough a time of it — unlike last year, when the Crew You Regatta was held on an unseasonably blustery day in early October.
The National Weather Service is calling for rain and up to 25 knots of southwesterly wind on Saturday, but just a 10-knot westerly for a dry Sunday.