Introducing The California Offshore Race Week

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Mark English and Ian Rogers pushing the Moore 24 Mas! to the limit during the 2016 Coastal Cup.



Video onboard Mas entering the Santa Barbara channel just before sunset. Andy said it well - chewing up the ocean. It got even more windy for us after dark before we had a heart stopping park up 2 miles from the finish. We were watching White Trash & Snafu march on us before the wind settled back in from a new direction and we were able to set the #1 and find the imaginary finish line.

Two things stick out - one is how awesome it was to be out there in a small pack of moores racing one design for more than 300 miles (spin cup included that saw Mas and Snafu finish within 45 seconds of each other). Two is what a special experience being in the ocean on these boats is.

Team Mas is going to sadly miss Delta Ditch, too much time away from the family and need to re-stock on hall passes before Pac Cup. Will be thinking about the fleet on Saturday.


Mark English



Hull scratches from barnacles from whale fin...



Sunfish damage to the rudder...





Gilles Combrisson, Karl Robrock, Pete Trachy and Andrew Hamilton post race!

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Spinnaker Cup on Outsider, Azzura 310 with Greg Nelsen, Karl Crawford, Daniel Alvarez, Rob Blackmore.

[roleur]

Mark English and Andrew Hamilton pushing the Moore 24 Mas! to the limit during the 2016 Coastal Cup.





Hull scratches from barnacles from whale fin...



Sunfish damage to the rudder...





Giles Combrisson, Karl Robrock, Pete Trachy and Andrew Hamilton post race!

Mark and Andrew? No, Mark and Ian Rogers.

The ride for the little boats down SB Channel was amazing. Some of the very best sailing of my life.

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1500 SoCal 300



Tracker

Slow progress as the fleet departs Santa Barbara and heads towards Santa Cruz Island in 6.9 knots of breeze.

[Hanno]

I see Outsider is projected to finish in 68 years. Hang in there Greg!

[solosailor]

I was issued an ORR-ez like the other small. My data was based on stripped down measurement weight and LOA, LWL, etc. done by US Sailing measurer for the certified DW-PHRF. After two races and with no explanation (having taken 1st overall in the SpinCup of the CORW boats) my rating was changed to .98.

Here is a visual I came up with to try to wrap my head around how late the change was. Not interested in beating our heads against the wall and show up to a light air LWL race against 41-50ft boats.

Rating Comp.jpg

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21:45 screenshot... more indecisiveness than an NBA referee flopping call....


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0830 positions, things are picking up!

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Midnight last night, with only Rio and Mighty Merloe in the barn...




0945 Sunday, most of the boats arrive for Sunday Service....

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SoCal 300 Winds Maximize Sailing Experience for Racers

SAN DIEGO (June 5, 2016) New for this year, the 2016 California Offshore Race Week featured the combined forces of five yacht clubs along the California coast to produce a week-long schedule of races in a tour covering almost 600 miles of the California Coast line. The race brought together the Spinnaker Cup, Coastal Cup and SoCal 300 from May 27 - June 5. In between races, the boats had enough layover time in each port to make modifications to their boats for the next legs, participate in beer can races, return to work or just meet up with friends and family.

Prior to the start of the SoCal 300 on June 3, 17 of the boats had participated in the first two events for California Offshore Race week. They experienced increasingly lighter winds coming down the coast, which foreshadowed expectations going into the SoCal 300. Forecasts were predicting a massive high pressure system to stall on the coast and push the much sought after Pacific trade winds even further out to sea. The light conditions caused 2 of the 29 boats registered for the SoCal 300 to drop out even before the race began, while several also retired during the race to return to Santa Barbara and San Francisco Bay.

Steve Meheen, skipper on Aszhou (RP63), recounted the first two legs of CORW series before heading into the SoCal 300. "The winds were light throughout the beginning of the week, but there was enough wind to race. It looks like the winds will be light again for the SoCal 300 and right now our division is stuck in a 4-way tie. We're hoping to sail our fastest to break out of that. The SoCal 300 should be interesting because of how the race will be scored (four separate legs), which will really illuminate how boats are performing against their ratings."

Bill Guilfoyle, skipper of Prevail (SC 52), had glowing remarks about the first two events of the CORW series.

"In a word the week has been fantastic. The racing has been close in our Santa Cruz 50/52 class. After 200 miles of racing, three of us finished within a few minutes of each other. The hospitality in Monterey was outstanding with Monterey Peninsula Yacht Club (MPYC) rolling out the red carpet and Betsy Jeffers and her team arranging escorts to pre-assigned slips, somehow getting 60 boats into the harbor and keeping the food and drink flowing until our departure on Sunday. We made good use of our lay day completing some minor repairs and enjoying a relaxed day ashore in beautiful Monterey."

SoCal 300 Chairman and crew aboard FOX (TP-52), David Servais, also expressed his gratitude to MPYC saying, "Betsy Jeffers did a spectacular job hosting the boats during that layover and everything went off without a hitch. We had enough time to enjoy the aquarium and festivals for Memorial Day in Monterey."

Servais also recounted some of the tight rivalry occurring in Division A. "There was only one minute between the second, third, and fourth place finishes in the Division A during the Coastal Cup. Additionally, the Division A boats were in a four-way tie going in to the SoCal 300. So to say it has been close all week is an understatement."

Bill Helvestine, skipper on Deception (SC 50) from St. Francis Yacht Club, reported that, "this is some of the best racing on the West Coast. Prevail, Horizon and Lucky Duck had a match race within themselves during the Spinnaker Cup. They all finished within five minutes of each other, which is just incredible after an 18 hour race."

"Going into the SoCal 300 we are hoping to improve our game. We have not placed as well as we could have, some of which we blame on the light winds, but we keep trying to improve. Luckily, our crew is great and we haven't had any breakdowns. We owe a big thanks to Bill Guilfoyle, David Servais and others who had the foresight to organize the week the way they did," expressed Helvestine.

However, the conditions during this year's SoCal 300 were not ideal for those hoping to improve. The race started in Santa Barbara with about 2-4 knots of wind which stayed light until boats were able to clear the Santa Cruz Channel where there was slightly more pressure, but nothing too significant.

A crew member on Prevail described the race as "brutal" in one word. "It was a challenging race because the wind never got going. The fog was extremely dense, with maybe only 100 feet of visibility. The toughest part was getting out of the Santa Cruz Channel. Because of these factors, it took us an extra 12 hours to complete the race this year compared to last year."

Helvestine and his crew on Deception also spent longer on the water than they expected to. Trapped in the lee between the two Santa Cruz Islands, "We made the decision to put our anchor down at one point because we weren't certain where the currents would take us. We didn't want to hit a rocky point and be forced to turn the engine on. So we dropped anchor next to a Cal40, which looked like a complete ghost ship in the distance because of the fog."

HL Enloe's Orma 60, Mighty Merloe, was the first boat to finish after about 23 hours and 13 minutes, as the lone trimaran to compete in the SoCal 300.

Navigator on Mighty Merloe, Artie Means, reported what it was like for them out on the race course. "We were the only multihulls out there unfortunately. Completing the course in 23 hours was on the slower side for us, but we still finished 9 hours ahead of Rio100. The fog definitely made the race more nerve-racking. We went through the first gate at the islands and didn't even see them and we almost ran into a weather buoy (end of leg 3/beginning leg 4) at one point. Regardless, it was a fun race with the scoring gates and the multiple marks. Hopefully next year we will have somebody to race against!"

Runaway (Andrews 70), Kokopelli II (SC 52) and Numbers (Taylor/Goetz 49) were the winners of the monohull classes A, C and D respectively.

Mike Price's ODay 39, Peacemaker, led the class E boats to the finish line. He and Ed Sanford's J/105, Creative, battled their way around the 255 nm course hardly more than sight distance apart for the majority of the race. Reflecting on the chase, Ed Sanford recounted the moment when their J/105 rose up on a swell and landed on a kelp island....while Peacemaker sailed away into the night.

Horizon (SC 50), skippered by John Schulze from Balboa Yacht Club, took first place in the overall race week standings and Varuna (Rogers 36) won the four-way tie in the overall rankings of Division A.

Lastly, for the first time ever, this year's SoCal 300 was partnered with Sailonline.org to make the race virtual with conditions and elements mimicking the race in real life. There were 205 participants from 35 different nations who competed in the virtual race, with 10 different nations filling the top 10 places. The margin between first and tenth places was only 23 minutes and 5 seconds, which was a much closer gap than in the actual race. This close and competitive racing in Sailonline.org virtual races is significant since it helps to sharpen skills for the real world.

The consensus at the awards ceremony hosted by the San Diego Yacht Club was that this was a successful offshore racing model for the owners and sailors involved. We are excited to bring it back in 2017 with improvements and another great turn out.

Full results of the whole CORW and the SoCal 300 can be found HERE!

Emily Willhoft
Communications Director
SDYC

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Spadefoot, a custom Schumacher 28, racing Spinnaker Cup and Coastal Cup 2016 in preparation for Pacific Cup 2016.

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Slimed By Whales Breath

Len Bose was crewing aboard John Shulze's SC 50' Horizon for the Spinnaker Cup and pens this piece on close encounters of the Cetacean kind





"I just returned from the first two legs of the California Offshore Race Week, from San Francisco to Monterey and Monterey to Santa Barbara, aboard the Santa Cruz 50 Horizon.
This Friday is the start of the final leg from Santa Barbara to San Diego.

The first thing you notice while sailing in Northern California, especially in San Francisco Bay, is that it is cold, picturesque and horribly intimidating. The wind is always blowing in the 20-knot range and local sailors always show up to the boat with their foul-weather gear pants on.

Once the butterflies go away, normally after the first or second tack, the scenery starts to get your attention. The city's shoreline, Alcatraz and of course the Golden Gate Bridge, just leave you in awe until the next 30-knot wind hits you and the boat tries to wobble out from under you while sailing downwind with a spinnaker up.

We started the first leg one of the race in good shape in relation to our competition and sailed under the gate and out into a body of water referred to as the "potato patch." The wind was blowing in the high teens and we were in race, rather than survival, mode."




"As we started to head south near Lands End Point the breeze dropped to around 10 knots and we saw our first pod of whales traveling north. We altered our course to miss the pod.

Just as we thought we were well clear of the pod, two whales breached the water just below us. We bumped into the first one and rode up on the back of the second. I was sitting on the weather rail in all my foul-weather gear and life harness, looking similar to the Michelin Man, when the whales came up from beneath us.
I could barely spit out the word "whale" before we bumped into them. By the time we rode on the second whale I was still trapped under the lifeline looking straight down the whale's spout and I got slimed when the whale spouted.

There was lots going on in this race other than just the sailing. While leaving Monterey, on leg two, we witnessed a great white shark leap out of the water and grab hold of a large seal lion. We were close enough to see the expression on the sea lion's face and it was not having a good day.


While approaching Santa Barbara we noticed another pod and started joking that the whales were looking for us after running into their friends. We made a substantial change in course and yet we came extremely close to running into another whale. We had to have startled this one because it made a quick dive and the tail fin came well out of the water and threw a wave over the boat.

We are doing well in the race. On leg one we finished first in class and fourth overall. Leg two we finished second in class and fourth overall.
We are looking strong going into the final leg to San Diego this weekend. Wish us luck again.


While working around the harbor this last week I noticed the sea lions are making their presence know again, as they do every summer.
If you have a boat on a mooring you had better go check on your boat and place sea lion deterrents on your boat and docks.
***
New idea I am staring this week — boat name of the week. Call me if you have any ideas.
Let's start with "Good Ju Ju."

Sea ya."

http://lenboseyachts.blogspot.com/20....html?spref=fb

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