When the smoke finally cleared this weekend for Richmond Yacht Club’s first ever Sarcoma Cup, the result was a foggy but fun trio of windward-leeward races on Saturday and a pursuit race on Sunday. The possessed Express 27 Witchy Woman stole the show by cleaning up on Saturday with two bullets and then topping it all off by finishing first on Sunday. They looked determined to win and quite good the whole series, which is a counter for the Express 27 season.

Only three Olson 25s showed up on Saturday, but they had the closest racing of any of the fleets with the Lake Tahoe-based Shadowfax winning by two points. Matching Witchy Woman's flair for clean, almost perfect sailing, was the Sydney 38 Howl in division A. They seemed to be in the zone with great crew work and a fast boat to beat out all the others by six points. The Santana 22s beat up on the WylieCat 30s in Division E for a one-two punch, with Tom Montoya's nicely restored Meliki winning by three points over Tchoupitoulas.

Sunday's pursuit was a one-way affair compared to the normal RYC modus operandi. All boats were told to go to clockwise around Alcatraz and Angel Island. Fred Paxton, running the race committee, explains: “The Youth Championships had ‘all’ the Berkeley Circle and Southampton booked before the Sarcoma Cup was scheduled. I had to negotiate with my friends at San Francisco YC that RYC would not interfere with their event. It was going to be even more interesting if the Sarcoma Cup got the 80 boats that the powers that be were predicting. On Saturday, I was going to run courses on both sides of the pier, just to get everyone good sailing since the mission was three ‘good’ races and back to the party by 3:30-4:00. The smaller turnout fit just north of the pier with no one upset we were in their way.

“Sunday the start line was in same area that we sailed on Saturday, again to stay out of the way, and they were putting marks within 300 yards of Pelican that morning. If I gave the fleet the choice of which way, then you risk some of the boats sailing through the other event. Take the islands to starboard, and you have no issues. Kept it simple and got everyone back to RYC within a half hour of each other.” With the start so far south, it was also a much shorter course to sail clockwise.

Thanks to Erik Simonson for sharing his photos. You can view many more of them at http://beatsarcoma.smugmug.com/gallery/5295428_79gAm#322954148_eHANG.

The sun came out for the pursuit race, and a perfect 15-knot westerly kept everyone entertained until they finished in time for $1 beers, free wine, snacks and sodas and at the club. All the $10,000+ proceeds went to Sarcoma research, and a better time could not be found. (Actually much better than for all of you beating down to Half Moon Bay in a painfully light southerly, although we understand some had a pleasant spinnaker run delivering the boat back on Sunday.)

The shoreside activities had begun on Friday evening, when Richmond YC usually has a good crowd in for dinner and drinks. Event organizer Nathalie Criou, who started Beat Sarcoma after her own bout with the disease, presented a slideshow of the sinking of Mureadritta’s XL, which got the worst of a whale encounter while en route from Hawaii to San Francisco after the 2006 Pacific Cup. Nat and others onboard had the presence of mind to snap some photos, and she told a very entertaining story. The new XL, a Jim Antrim-designed sportboat, would race in the Sarcoma Cup and will be heading to Hawaii in the Pacific Cup.

Nat and Nathan Bossett will also be heading to Hawaii in the doublehanded division aboard their Express 27 Elise, in part to raise awareness for Beat Sarcoma. For more on their Pacific Cup effort, see www.beatsarcoma.org/PacificCup2008.html. You can also make a donation on the site. And check out www.beatsarcoma.smugmug.com for their photos.

Nat was diagnosed with Sarcoma in 2006 and was in treatment for about a year. “There is very little data,” she explained. “There is no known cure. Surgery is the only treatment, mostly because there is no research money available. There aren’t a lot of big efforts to raise funds. Because I am a sailor and I was out of the water for a year, I decided to associate sailing with Sarcoma. I approached a few yacht clubs, and Richmond was looking for a cause.” Richmond’s Commodore Torben Bentsen expressed interest in doing it again next year. Nat has also received interest from venues elsewhere on the West Coast and abroad.

More fund-raising at the club included a raffle on Saturday evening and a live auction after the racing on Sunday. The most interesting auction item was a beautiful painting called ‘Femmes, Ames’, which translates from French to ‘Women, Souls’. The painting was donated by Hervé Gigot, an artist from the tiny West African nation of Bénin, a former French colony. Hervé’s brother Jean-Claude, soon to be an American citizen, was on hand to present the painting and volunteer. The painting represents the women of their country who would believe they were two or three months pregnant, then become ill and die. It would turn out that they weren’t pregnant, but had tumors. With no medical care, they are not diagnosed or treated. Jean-Claude told us that his aunt passed away in such a manner, and insists that it would cost very little to bring cancer care to Bénin.

It is said that Sarcoma is a rare cancer, and that is true for adults, but it accounts for 20% of all cancers in children. For more information on this group of diseases and fund-raising efforts, see www.beatsarcoma.org. For complete results of the weekend’s regatta, see www.richmondyc.org.

We took a heck of a lot photos over the course of both days of activities, so be sure to check out our photo galleries/slideshows.