Westsail Love

We’d wager there aren’t too many cruising boat rendezvous that would attract not just one but four Singlehanded TransPac vets — plus two hopefuls — but then again, the venerable Westsail 32 is in a class of its own. The Northern California Westsail Rendezvous was held this weekend at San Leandro YC where about a dozen boats and more than 50 guests converged to discuss all things Westsail. 

Among the crowd were a pack of Singlehanded Traspac racers: Dave King from Saraband (’10), Joshua Siegel from Sunquest (’08), Rob Tryon who did the race in a Valiant 32 (’08) and was Race Chair for this summer’s edition, and Randy Leasure from Tortuga (’12). The quartet did their best to convince Stockton’s Duke MacGill of Amable and Gary Burton of Elizabeth Ann — who sailed down from Brookings, Oregon, with crew John Boye, just for the rondy — to enter the 2014 running of the race. Only time will tell if they were successful.

‘Mr. Westsail’ himself, Bud Taplan, was also in attendance, offering advice and ‘two-beer surveys’ to the gathered boats. At dinner, he did his best to tell what promised to be very entertaining stories about his times traveling with pal Bob Knobloch of Soltero but was convinced to hold off until kids — or maybe just journalists — weren’t in the room.

If you’ve never attended one, rendezvous are rife with ‘teachable moments’. For example, we learned more about DSC-enabled VHF radios than we ever thought we cared about from a very thorough presentation by SLYC Commodore Norm Pennington. In fact, having been lazy about setting up our own radios to take full advantage of DSC, we’re going write about the process — and benefits — in a future issue of Latitude 38. 

If you happen to spot a roving pack of Westsails on the Bay this week, that will be the remnants of the rondy on a weeklong cruise of the Bay. Good timing, as the AC45s will be out in full force, as will the Blue Angels for Fleet Week (see top story).