God’s Reefing System

Last Saturday was crazy windy (again). While some battled their way to the Farallones and back singlehanded, others fought it out on the Berkeley Circle in San Francisco Yacht Club’s Elite Keel Regatta. On Saturday, Rich Jepsen and crew, sailing aboard Anthony Sandberg’s IOD Cedric, had vang issues forcing them to retire. After solving their vang problems, they were looking forward to Sunday.

Despite mellower conditions the next day, the Supreme Being decided Saturday’s ‘get off the race course’ message hadn’t satisfied the mysterious objective, so the top half the rig came down due to a weather upper shroud failure on the first upwind leg of the first race — Cedric was in first place, by the way. Still, the crew was able to claim three ‘firsts’ of a different sort for the weekend. Luckily no one was hurt, but it’s no fun to go out for a two-race weekend and have every combo of ‘D’ represented on your five-race tally: DNF, DNS, DNC. Reminds us of our grade school report card. This is going to take a little more repair work than Saturday’s vang problem. We hope to see Cedric sailing soon.