November Classics

Each fall, Latitude 38 trots out that old saw about how the wind is usually lighter and the winter season is a good time for newbies to try racing. Note that we say "usually" and not "always." The conditions for Berkeley Yacht Club’s first Midwinters of the season could not have been more different on the two days of the weekend. Saturday began with a mellow, 5-knot northerly that held most of the way through the 8-mile, double-sausage race, until a 10-knot westerly filled in, turning the last downwind leg into a headstay reach. Typical midwinter racing — so far.

The storm that blew through overnight was trailed by heavy air and sloppy seas on Sunday. Last year’s two shorthanded divisions had grown to two singlehanded and one doublehanded division. "The Sunday fleet is about half shorthanders," said Bobbi Tosse, who runs the BYC Midwinters. "I would have surmised that this group would have the highest attrition, but I was wrong. More than 60% of the 23 starters were of this group." In the challenging conditions, none of the shorthanded boats flew spinnakers, and most were reefed. Only one had to drop out, with gear breakage. On one of the fully crewed boats, the J/24 Froglips, a crewmember rolled off during pre-start sailing. Fortunately, he clung to the boat and quickly rolled back aboard, and Froglips went on to win Division 2.

Sixty-one competitors signed up for this year’s RegattaPRO Winter One Design Series, and 48 showed up on Saturday, from the J/120, J/105, J/24 and J/70 and Melges and Moore 24 classes, for the first day of racing west of the Berkeley Circle. RegattaPRO’s Jeff Zarwell called it a "beautiful day, a little on the cool side, but hey, it’s now winter racing."

"With a forecast of light winds out of the north early on, moving to a westerly around 1:30, I sent the six fleets on a northerly course of 310° (yes, that’s a northerly to me, straight out of San Pablo Bay)," reports Zarwell. "Halfway through the last leg, the breeze began to move west." Zarwell finished all the fleets and quickly re-set the course to 230° even though the breeze hadn’t moved that far yet. "By the time we went into sequence it was dead on 230°. We saw up to 12 knots of breeze, steady for the rest of a beautiful afternoon on the Bay." Standings can be found on Jibeset.

"It came down to the last race," writes St. Francis YC’s Meredith Laitos about yesterday’s Big Sail. "Stanford and Cal were tied 1-1 in a best of three competition. As both teams prepared to start, the spectators went wild. The marching bands roared, the cheerleaders flew and the live commentary rang out."

"We keep having fun with this event, because — how can we not?" said Big Sail founder and race commentator Ron Young. "Lots of people pay attention to how to win the game of sailing. What we should be thinking about is how the game can win. And that’s what Big Sail does — by bringing in fans and new types of fun to the sport."

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"This year, Stanford won the Varsity Division and Cal won Young Alum and Masters. Each school won one race of Grandmasters, which meant the third race would determine it all," explained Laitos. "If Stanford won, the divisions would be tied and Stanford’s Varsity win would tip them over the edge. If Cal won, they would win three of four divisions and take the day." In that final race, Stanford rounded the windward mark ahead and never looked back. Next year, Young plans to add a women’s division to get more female sailors on the water.

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