Yucca, Not Mayan, Wins Classics at Rolex Big Boat Series

Last week, the skippers in the Classics division of September’s Rolex Big Boat Series received this message via email from Susan Ruhne, the regatta chair for host St. Francis Yacht Club: “The OA [organizing authority] received a scoring inquiry from Beau Vrolyk, skipper of Mayan, on the Monday after the regatta concluded. The PRO for your course followed RRS 90.3c and did the investigation, including working with the US Sailing Rating Office and the US Sailing Head of Offshore Ratings to review. We have now re-scored the regatta using the ORCez Time Correction Factor.   

“This means that Yucca won the class and Mayan finished in second. There are also some changes to results in individual races, but no other overall place changes. All can be viewed in Yacht Scoring.

“We apologize for the time it took, but the PRO and OA (all volunteers) were working through all the steps to ensure we did this correctly. We have many lessons learned that we will implement for the 2023 regatta.”

“In the early hours of Monday morning,” said Beau Vrolyk of the day after the RBBS concluded, “I was struck by a feeling of unease regarding the score.” Yucca had finished all four races first, but Mayan had corrected out overall. Beau tried to rescore the regatta himself. “I didn’t trust my numbers either,” he told us. “So I filed a scoring inquiry.”

As Beau wrote to Mayan’s very large crew, “I was surprised that we had won every race. While I know we sailed well, it didn’t feel like we were that dominant. I found what I believed was an error in the wind and course mix used for the Classic Class. I have already called Hank Easom and congratulated him on winning.”

Beau said that he and Michael Zolezzi, owner of Yucca, and Hank Easom, the helmsman and previous owner, would meet up for drinks and to swap trophies. “I wouldn’t want a trophy I didn’t win. Doing the right thing is always the right thing to do. It was just a simple error — the regatta was a tremendous success.”

A belated congratulations to Michael, Hank and the crew of Yucca, and kudos to Beau and Stacey Vrolyk for setting a great example for the rest of us yacht racers. This sport is self-policing, and good sportsmanship should always win out over the trophy hunt.