Halloween Edition Race Preview

Boo! It’s your spooky girlfriend here with a special Halloween edition of Weekend Racing Preview.

Steampunk is the theme for Richmond YC’s Great Pumpkin Regatta. On Saturday, one design and PHRF classes will race on the Southhampton, Olympic Circle and Deep Water drop-mark courses. Saturday night’s party will raise the dead — for dinner, dancing, and a costume contest. On Sunday, PHRF and BAMA-rated boats will sail a pursuit race around Angel and Alcatraz Islands in either direction. To promote family racing, spinnaker-rated boats sailing without a spinnaker will have a 10-second-per-mile allowance. You can still sign up in person until 10 tomorrow morning. See www.richmondyc.org.

Alamitos Bay YC in Long Beach is hosting their fun Halloween Regatta Sunday, October 27. Ocean course classes include 5o5, A-Cat, Cal 20, Etchells, Finn, F18, Hobie 16, Laser, Mercury, PHRF, Portsmouth, and Thistle. Bay course classes include Lido 14, Naples Sabot, and Laser. This will be the last chance to launch and retrieve boats from the ABYC dinghy ramp and docks for some time. The ramp, gangways and docks in the basin adjacent will be demolished beginning November 1 in preparation for replacement over the next several months, a scary prospect indeed! Even more frightening for the I-5 trailer-sailor set is that this small-boat regatta conflicts with StFYC’s Fall Dinghy and Olympic Classes Regatta this weekend.

Tiburon YC’s Red Rock Regatta used to coincide with Great Pumpkin on the last weekend of October and with TYC’s own Halloween party (which has fallen by the wayside). Lately the Red Rock Regatta has been held on the first Saturday in November instead. This year, that’s November 2, Dìa de los Muertos. Enter who dare!

The Dìa de los Muertos weekend also brings us the first big Midwinter races of the season, including Golden Gate YC’s Seaweed Soup Regatta on November 2 and Sausalito YC’s Midwinter Series on November 3.

Speaking of spooky girlfriends, why not scare yourself a little and let your gf or female crew drive your boat in the Jack & Jill + 1? Of course, female boat owners are also encouraged to enter the women skippers’ triplehanded race coming to Island YC November 3. It’s the last event on Latitude 38’s unofficial women’s circuit.

As one of our favorite sailors, Tommy Goodwin, always says, "Don’t be afraid!"