Awards were handed out last night for the Singlehanded Sailing Society’s last race of the season, Vallejo 1-2, and to the overall doublehanded and singlehanded season winners. The Vallejo 1-2 perpetual trophy for first overall went to an out-of-towner who’d never raced with the SSS - or on the Bay - before: Mike Kaminskas and the B-25 Biyach (ex-Blood Vessel - remember her? She used to live in Sausalito and race locally). Mike thanked his fellow racers for making him feel so welcome and invited all to come race down in L.A.

For the SSS season, perpetual trophies are given to the overall singlehanded winner and the overall doublehanded winner. Of the former, Steve Hill, Commodore Mark Deppe said, “Our rising star of the year came from nowhere and rose to the top.” Steve sails the Beneteau First 42 Coyote.

“It’s a lot of work,” said Steve as he accepted the trophy. “Sometimes I don’t know if I can grind in the jib or how many more tacks I can do. And then spinnaker up and down - it gets very messy.”

We asked Steve what his secret was for winning the season. “It’s actually my father-in-law’s secret, and it’s to race all the races,” Steve told us. “If Ed Russell on Chelonia had raced in the Three Bridge Fiasco he would have won this. I did well but I blew two races completely. I made a big mistake in the Singlehanded Farallones. When we came back from the Farallones and the wind died, I went to the San Francisco side. Stay away from the City. Everybody who went to the Marin side sailed right through. I was stuck at Mile Rock for two hours, and I was in the lead at the time. Same thing in the Vallejo 1. I took a flyer and I should have stayed with the fleet and covered them. I could have lost the season there. Those were my lessons. My wife Connie sailed the whole way back in the Vallejo 2 and we got second place. My brother-in-law Tim Russell says, ‘Don’t go out to the corners. Stay in the middle.’ Half Moon Bay was good for me because I stayed in the middle. It was upwind all the way, but that was good for me because my boat goes better upwind.

“Three weeks before the races I work out like a madman. I lift weights; I do sit-ups. I exercise until two days before the race, and then I’m sore for 2-3 days after the race. It’s really physically challenging. I don’t have self-tailing primaries. I’ve got a 135% genoa and a 24,000 lb. boat.” Steve plans to sail in the singlehanded division again next year to see if he can avoid some of the mistakes he made this year. He also plans to help out on the race deck. Maybe in a future year he and Connie will do the doublehanded season.

“Arcadia started life out as a standard Gary Mull-designed Santana 27,” said Gordie Nash winner of the doublehanded trophy. “I had lunch with Gary Mull about 11 years ago and said, ‘We know we can make a boat go faster with a longer waterline, a deeper keel with a bulb, more sail area and stuff.’ Gary’s eyes lit up and he said, ‘What do you have in mind?’ I told him I was thinking about taking a Santana 27 and lengthening the waterline and having a plumb bow. He got really excited, cleared the plates away and got out a napkin and started drawing. ‘You want a plumb bow, bulb keel, outboard-hung rudder, swooped-back stern, asymmetrical kite, fractional rig...’ ‘Yep, that’s it.’ He said, ‘That would really be cool. Lets do it,’ and he died. So it’s the last Gary Mull boat ever designed.

“I found a boat for not a lot of money. It was falling apart, ready for a dumpster. I saved it and rebuilt it. Everything is new. We could go back to the people who sailed Santana 27s and ask, “What was good and what was bad?’ They’d say, ‘Man that thing was fast upwind but slow downwind.’ So everything I did was to make it go fast downwind because it already had the Gary Mull pedigree upwind. As it turns out, the boat goes really fast downwind and kind of hangs in there upwind.

“It was waterlogged when I got it. You could stick a finger through a bulkhead. So, I took it up to Napa and dried it out on the hard for a year. Now it’s dry. It lives on a trailer at Schoonmaker. The hoist there is the only one in Marin that can handle it. I got the weight down enough, to about 4,300 lbs. It started life at 5,400.

Regarding the difficulty level of doublehanding with wife Ruth Suzuki, Gordie said that, “Most of the time we don’t crash when she and I are sailing. Corinthian [SSS Corinthian Race on May 31] we only jibed twice and we only crashed twice. It was blowing 22 knots when we jibed. It was howling!”

Ruth commented that “It was really kind of a lot fun and we actually prefer it to trying to find five more people and making more sandwiches and all that.”

“We’re going to do the doublehanded series again next year and join SSS,” said Gordie. “We thought we’d do a few of these races, and as it turned out we did all of them and paid the entry fee each time.” Entry fees are included in the price of membership, so it makes sense economically to join if you’re going to do three or more races.

Some other announcements made at the meeting included a tentative schedule for 2009, the most interesting aspect of which is the possibility of using the Half Moon Bay race on June 27 as a feeder for the New Boreas Race, Half Moon Bay to Moss Landing, on July 4. A bunch of hands went up for this idea. The SSS races won’t conflict with any of the YRA’s OYRA ocean series or Party Circuit, both of which have shorthanded divisions, and the Giants will be away for the South Beach race. Once the schedule is official, it will be posted on www.sfbaysss.org, where you’ll also find complete results for all the races this year and the overall season.