Richmond Yacht Club Hosts 78th Annual El Toro Stampede
The El Toro Stampede is the oldest annual event at the Richmond Yacht Club (RYC). It’s changed over the 78 years of El Toro racing. Back in the 1990s the Stampede featured Saturday four-boat team racing, plus Sunday races for five individual weight divisions from Flyweight all the way to Brahma Bull; a backward or no-daggerboard in-the-harbor Green Bottle Race (bottle of Tanqueray for a trophy); plus a similar Soda Special Race (with a six-pack of root beer trophy) for kids.
The top three in each weight division raced in the Weight Division Medal Race. The whole huge fleet raced in two All Throwers races. The overall All Throwers champ, the Stampede winner, would receive a sack of steer manure as an award.
The Stampede has evolved, and this year 17 boats raced four no-throwout races. The courses, held near “Screaming Parents Cove” in the Potrero Reach Channel, were decently long. Fluky, double-hot-dog Race 1 was about an hour long, before a cool eight-knot southwesterly filled in and built for the second race.
Haydon Stapleton, the young 2023 national champion, looked as if he was going to dominate, winning the first race after a bad start, and running away with triangle-course Race 2. As the breeze built to 12 knots for Race 3, Gordie Nash seized control of the series. Stapleton got stuffed out at the starting line and had to scramble back, settling for second behind the yellow boat. A barge came through the course in the middle of the second lap, splitting the fleet, and 2022 Stampede winner Tom Burden got caught on the wrong side, going from third to ninth.
The course for Race 4, by Stampede tradition, had a weather mark rounded to starboard, and a red channel marker also taken to starboard, followed by a downwind run into the Richmond YC harbor, finishing off the end of A Dock. Nash and Burden got to the weather mark well ahead and match-raced around the course and into the marina. Nash won. Stapleton finished fourth, making the final series score close, but he really was in control all day long, despite worrying, “I’m going to try to not fall out of the boat,” before the racing started.
Tom Burden and Tom Tillotson (the very quick current national champ) finished in a tie for third, with Burden winning a third-level tie breaker. These two Toms, with very different sailing styles, also finished in a tie in last week’s Big Dinghy Regatta, with Tillotson winning.
The rest of the top 10 sailors included Buzz Blackett, Packy Davis (in a wood boat), youth sailor Alex Quinn, Lorn Marcellini (who lost his halyard in Race 3), Tony Su and Chris Sullivan. Rowena Carlson was headed for a top-five finish before a broken boom in the third race ended her day. Jim Morton sailed a vintage wood Toro, Honeybee, number 5649.
Vickie Gilmour ran the series using her Grand Banks Fats as a committee boat, and provided the traditional mugs as trophies. See everyone next year!