Racing Wrap-Up

Imagine traveling to a regatta halfway around the world only to find yourself duking it out with your homies. On April 2, Mike Holt from Santa Cruz YC and crew Carl Smit won the SAP 5o5 World Championship in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, with a day to spare. The defending world champions battled another SCYC team, Ted Conrads and Brian Haines, for supremacy. Conrads and Haines finished the series in third place behind the British team of Ian Pinnell and Johannes Tellen.

Fred Paxton from Richmond YC also pulled off a repeat — of last year’s Bullship win. Saturday’s 62nd Bullship Regatta saw all 22 El Toros complete the course from Sausalito to San Francisco on the morning’s flood current. Although adverse for escaping Sausalito, a flood is preferable to an ebb, which can sweep the little 8-ft prams out the Gate. The race was mostly upwind, light at the start, breezy and choppy toward the end. See www.eltoroyra.org for details.

Mike Burch, commodore of Cabrillo Beach YC, won the Association of San Pedro Bay Yacht Clubs 2015 Walt Elliott Harbor Challenge on Saturday. This regatta began in 1968, and CBYC has now won 15 times. The defending club, Long Beach YC, hosted the challenge in Catalina 37s. Three races were sailed under sunny skies in an 8- to 15-knot southwesterly breeze in Long Beach Harbor, in the area that has come to be known as Congressional Cup Stadium.