Sequoia YC has two midwinter series. One, the Winter Series, is sailed on Saturdays and consists of the usual division starts with Time on Distance scoring. The other, the Redwood Cup, sailed on Sundays, uses a pursuit race, reverse-start format, with racers scored in the order they finish.

This weekend, the Winter Series race had almost zero wind - as you can see - and a long delay. “After waiting for an hour and half everyone was happy with three knots of wind!” reported Race Chair Jim Peterson. Amazingly, all but one of the 15 boats racing managed to finish.

On Sunday, conditions were completely different, as we mentioned in our reports on the Estuary. “Really bad weather,” had postponed Race #4 on February 15, so Sequoia planned to run Race #4 before Race #5. Carnage ensued, with spinnakers among the gory victims.

Jim Peterson’s Beneteau 42 MADE Easy lost a kite on Sunday. “I still have my ‘hot lips’ 0.5 oz. chute.” says Jim. “Our race on Sunday had 15-30 knots of wind and I was running with my 1.5 oz. chute. When we jibed the boat in about 15 knots of wind, we had a massive spinnaker wrap. After about an hour of trying various things to get it unwrapped, the wind kicked up to 30 knots and my knife came out. This split the chute in half and I had a giant flag flying at the top of my mast. When I got back to the dock, I spent about an hour at the top of the mast and finally got the top half down to the deck. The next step is to see what my sailmaker says.”

For more on both series, see www.sequoiayc.org/racing. For more of Erik’s fab photos, see www.printroom.com/ghome.asp?domain_name=h2oshots.