Great Pumpkin Open for PHRF and Multis

For all you dinghy sailors out there, you won’t want to miss Richmond YC’s Totally Dinghy Regatta this weekend, with racing on Saturday and Sunday with an inexpensive dinner on Saturday night. Currently the Lasers, El Toros, Optimists, Bytes, International 14s and Flying Dutchmans (or is it Dutchmen?) have the biggest one-design numbers and will be joined by Portsmouth handicap classes on two courses. The regatta will also mark the West Coast debut of the new Weta, a smokin’ little Kiwi-built, singlehanded trimaran that’s already drawn five entries despite having been introduced in the States just this year.

Looking further ahead in RYC’s regatta schedule, the October 25-26 Great Pumpkin Regatta is undergoing some changes this year which should open it up to even more boats than the 250 or so that showed up last year. The three buoy races on Saturday and the pursuit race on Sunday will remain, but for the first time there will be dedicated handicap divisions for Saturday, and multihulls are invited for Sunday’s race.

"There were so many requests to come to the Pumpkin from boats that were in small classes, or were one-of-a-kind, that we decided to simply open it to all boats with PHRF certificates on Saturday," said regatta chair Eric Arens. "We tried to restrict it to monohulls in the past. However, there were beseeching appeals from some multihulls to be allowed to come, so we are inviting BAMA for Sunday’s pursuit race."

More info for both of these is or will be available at www.richmondyc.org.