
Santa Barbara to King Harbor Race

©2009 Latitude 38 Media, LLC
Afterburner, Bill Gibb’s Ventura-based 52-ft Bladerunner catamaran, used idyllic catamaran sailing conditions to set a new course record of 5 h, 37 m in last Friday’s 81-mile race from Santa Barbara to Redondo Beach. The Kiwi-built cat averaged a marvelous 18 knots for the distance sailed, and a little over 14 knots for the rated course, to beat her old record by 10 minutes.
The second boat to finish was Doug Baker’s Andrews 80 Magnitude from Long Beach, just back from Hawaii, where she missed the all-time monohull TransPac record by only minutes. She finished about 50 minutes behind Afterburner.

©2009 Latitude 38 Media, LLC
But don’t try to get Gibbs into a multihulls versus monohulls argument. "It’s all horses for courses," he says. "I have tremendous respect for canting keel monohulls, and Magnitude has beat us boat for boat a number of times. What this year’s race proved is that a catamaran like mine needs moderate winds, meaning 10 to 20 knots, and flat seas, to set records. In winds under eight knots or over 20 knots, and in bigger seas, and sailing upwind, Magnitude is faster. But this year the conditions were right there in Afterburner‘s sweet spot."

©2009 Latitude 38 Media, LLC
In the world of course record setters, Afterburner is a budget operation. Gibbs bought the now 22-year-old cat more than nine King Harbor Races ago for $100,000, and most of his sails are nearly seven years old, having been overbuilt from Cuban fiber to last for many years.

©2009 Latitude 38 Media, LLC
But when it came to corrected time honors in the 107-boat fleet, Chris Slagerman’s Firebird Phat Cat stole the show by nearly 40 minutes over John Staff’s Viper 830 Plankton. For what we could see in the pre-race manuevers, that Phat Cat cat seemed like she could do eight knots in just four knots of wind. Whew!

©2009 Latitude 38 Media, LLC
We’ve done about 10 King Harbor Races over the years, and can’t remember one that was more pleasant. Thanks to unusually strong winds — eight knots — boats were able to get away from Santa Barbara faster than normal. While we never saw more than 15 knots, the wind was unusually consistent in the traditional light spots, meaning the lee of Santa Cruz Island and when crossing Santa Monica Bay. It allowed our Profligate — despite being loaded down with twin RIBs and outboards, full water and fuel tanks, plus other junk, to finish just 10 minutes after the class-winning Santa Cruz 50 Fifty-one Fifty. Alas, two hours were later mysteriously added to our elapsed time, perhaps as a penalty for taking up too much yacht club dock space after the race. Does that mean we’re going to have to forfeit our fourth-in-class cheese platter trophy? We hope not. No matter what, like the Terminator, we’ll be back. And you should think about signing up too!
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Corrected time class winners:
ULDB A — Pendragon 4, Davidson 52, John MacLaurin
ULDB B — Fifty-one Fifty, SC 50, Mike Warns
ULDB C — Capt. Sluggo, Hobie 33, Burke
Sprit UI — Plankton, Viper 830, John Staff
Sprit PI — Shenanigans, J/120, Gary Winton,
PHRF A — Ono, Olson 40, Folkman Galloway
PHRF B — Elixir, Jeanneau 49DS, Chad Downey
PHRF C — Rush Street, J/29, Larry Leveille
PHRF D — Rasa, Islander 36, Ken Ziegler
ORCA — Phat Cat, Firebird, Chris Slagerman
J/105 — Escapade, Mark Noble
Farr 40 — Piranha, David Voss
For complete results, visit the King Harbor YC website.