The Doublehanded Farallones race finished at Golden Gate YC at the same time as the Lightship race for J/105s and J/120s was finishing at the St. Francis YC. Not long after our local fleets starting coming in, the giant French catamaran Gitana 13 sailed out the Gate, to begin her SF to Yokohama record attempt. It all made for exciting spectating at the bridge and on the beach.

The Bay Area Multihull Association started their Doublehanded Farallones race early, at 0800, as they had a lot of water to cover, about 58 nm of it. With less distance to sail, the J/Boats got going at 1100. Alan Rudolph, crew aboard the J/105 Lulu, reported wild ocean conditions. “The wind kicked up about a half mile past Point Bonita and clocked to the north. We had 16-18 knots of wind and 8-10 foot swells.” After rounding the Lightship, “We had 25 minutes of great surfing. We were fourth in the Gate. Going to Baker Beach was the right choice.” Baker Beach is southwest of the Golden Gate Bridge on the SF side, and often offers current relief. The dangers of going in there include getting too close to the breaking surf, and too close to the ‘South Tower Demon’. A lot of racers flirted with the Demon on Saturday. The area between the South Tower and shore is restricted, for good reason.

“It got big and nasty beyond the Lightbucket,” commented another sailor. The conditions worked out okay for Moore 24s, as three of them corrected out to the top spots overall in the Doublehanded Farallones: Mooretician, Absinthe, and The Bar-ba-loot. Also making quick work of the course, Philippe Kahn’s Open 50 Pegasus was the first boat to cross the finish line, correcting out to third in Division 2.

The wild conditions did not work out so well for the Olson 40 Pterodactyl, which sailed away from her crew, leaving them to be picked up by a fortuitously passing catamaran which wasn’t racing. An EPIRB was dropped on the wayward sailboat to track her, in the hopes that she can be recovered in calmer seas. Kimball Livingston has an excellent item about the incident on his blog at http://sailmagazine.blogspot.com/2008/03/suddenly-swimming.html. Several other boats dropped out of the DHF as the afternoon wore on.

Not too long after Pegasus rocketed in, a whole clump of J/120s returned from the Lightship, still battling for first-second-third place after 25 nm!

Not longer after, and all alone, Tiburon emerged as the first J/105.

Those same windy conditions prompted the French crew of Gitana 13 to begin their attempt on the SF to Yokohama, Japan, record that afternoon.

They went out the Gate and immediately got hammered. “We were expecting the Pacific swell,” Skipper Lionel Lemonchois wrote on the Gitana website, “but we were really shaken about for the first ten hours at sea: under two reef ORC, soaked through despite our drysuits… There’s certainly nicer introductions!” The DHF racers could have told them that. You can read more and watch video at www.gitana-team.com/en/gitana/index.asp.

For results of the J/Boats’ Ocean Race, see www.stfyc.com. For results of the Doublehanded Farallones Race, see www.sfbama.org. We wish Luc de Faymoreau all the best in recovering Pterodactyl.