The weather predictions were perfect, and the courses - starting and finishing at Golden Gate YC and including 34-36 miles of ocean racing with a rounding of the Northern Approach Buoy - promised a fun ride. Even the currents were favorable, with an ebb at the start and a strong flood to bring the boats home. Yet less than half of the boats registered for OYRA’s Northern Star showed up.

With lighter than predicted wind conditions, some boats in PHRO-1A felt this might be their chance for victory. One of the match-ups was the David vs. Goliath pairing of Ocelot and Flash, the latter a professionally sailed Alan Andrews designed TransPac 52, the former an all-amateur crew on a converted, turboed WylieCat 44.

After a casual start by Ocelot, the two boats stayed close to each other all the way out the Gate. Kevin Flanigan, future former owner of Ocelot, described Flash’s problems: “It was light all day, but there was a patch out of Point Bonita that went real dead for awhile, so we lost progress for a little while, but Flash lost a lot for a long time. We actually passed them. It wasn’t windy enough to get Ocelot up on a plane, but had it been windier Flash would have been much farther ahead of us. I felt we were really lucky to be that close to them."

Ocelot has an America's Cup style rig and spinnaker set-up. She can sail deeper with the asymmetrical spinnaker than Flash by bringing the pole back, but it's a much more complicated system to jibe. Good crew work is essential to keep up speed. ”Greg Nelsen put the crew together,” said Kevin. “We had two people who had never been on the boat before. We were basically a new crew, not the same that did the Big Boat Series last year. Everybody performed great. I was really proud of everyone."

Flash led the way back in the Gate, but Ocelot was able to place well ahead of Flash; they came in first in their division with Flash rounding out fourth.

Although Ocelot is for sale, Kevin will race her until a new owner can be found. ”We are planning on doing the Spinnaker Cup and the Coastal Cup, then race down in LA until I can interest a buyer. I am getting a bug for this racing thing, and I'd like to look into a GP 42 or Class 40 or something like that." New owner or not, Ocelot might be able to slay more giants in the future.

Results are available at www.yra.org/OYRA/oyra_race_results.html. As mentioned in the opening paragraph, we noticed in perusing the results that a majority of boats entered did not race. We’d be interested to hear any theories as to why this is. If you’d like to chime in, drop us an email.