Jessica Cup

Jessica Cup

“Basically, we won the instruction reading contest,” commented one of the winning racers in last weekend’s Jessica Cup, a two-day regatta hosted by St. Francis Yacht Club for Master Mariners. Allow us to explain.

After Saturday’s two races, some of the divisions came down to the third and final race on Sunday to determine the prizes. Two Marconi divisions, one gaff, and two one design fleets were given a Cityfront course with Harding Rock the last mark before the finish at buoy A in front of the club. With a typical westerly wind direction, you can just head straight for it. So A and the race deck are perfectly lined up at 12 o’clock. One might tend to cross the finish line the most common way, east to west, with A to starboard. That’s exactly what the first boat in, Paul and Chris Kaplan’s Santana, did, in fine style. And the lovingly restored 1935 schooner got the gun, sailed away from the line and started to drop her sails.

The second finisher, Bright Star, followed close on her heels in the same direction, and got a horn. But then the third boat in, the “ancient aluminum” Alpha, sailed over the line the opposite way! No acknowledgement from the race committee. So they dipped down below the line and crossed it again. Nothing. So then they sailed around A and crossed the line the way the two leaders did - ah, a horn. But wait! The instructions said to cross the line with A to port, not starboard. Alpha set the race committee straight.

Santana rehoisted her sails and recrossed the line, getting a third place in Marconi 1 for the series after Tim Murison’s Island Clipper 10 Bolero and Richard Pfaff’s Alpha. Ted Hall’s Bright Star was already gone and scored a DNF for the third race, dropping from fourth to seventh place in the series.

With only one exception, the entries which won the last race won the series. Chorus, a Kettenburg sloop sailed out of Sausalito by Peter English, got the gun on Sunday and won Marconi 2. Terry Klaus’s Brigadoon got three bullets in Gaff. Don Taylor’s VIP topped the three Farallon Clippers, and Papoose won the three-boat L36 class. The one exception was Jeff McNish’s Valiant, which performed poorly on Saturday but really rallied to correct out first in Marconi 1 on Sunday. However they placed, all the boats looked really good!

Despite the confusion at the end of the last race, and the postponements on both days which are often inevitable at this time of year due to tardy wind, most competitors seemed to have had a delightful weekend of competition. Peter English said that when the wind filled in he thought that it would fill in like during the winter, staying around six knots, which is enough for Chorus to do well upwind but not downwind. So he was pleased when the breeze built to 13-14 knots on both days.

Sailmaker Paul Harris came on the L-36 Papoose, which hails from Brisbane, to check on the new Quantum main and genoa he’d sold to inventor/photographer Allen Edwards. “We had good conditions and good competition,” said Harris. “What an exciting time! We were six inches from Leda.” Harris was on the helm for that leg but Edwards did most of the driving. He’s sailed on Papoose for 18 years; it was his father’s boat. He needed the boat to be easy to handle by two people, as he often sails with just a friend or his wife, so “the new sails needed to be optimum not for racing or for cruising, but for me.”

The St. Francis YC ran the Joe Logan Regatta for Mercuries, a small open keelboat, concurrently. Mac Kilpatrick’s Arnold emerged atop a 10-boat fleet. The top four boats were separated by three points each. Complete results are at the same web page. Mercuries are two-person trailer-sailers, and will race out of Monterey Peninsula YC for their winter series, the Perry Cup. See www.merc583.addr.com/sail/index.html for more on the Mercs.

norcalsailing.com weekend update

October 23, 2007

next >

< previous