Just add water.

And wind. The fifth and last Golden Gate Yacht Club Seaweed Soup midwinter race began with a postponement. The morning’s Sierra-cold northeasterly had died, and the westerly had yet to take its place. Meanwhile, tons of water were rushing out the Gate on a rain-enhanced ebb. After less than an hour, conditions ideal for Cityfront racing developed, and the race committee sent the PHRF divisions on a triple-sausage 12.5 nm course. The one design fleets got shorter courses.

While GGYC was wrapping up their winter series, next door neighbor St. Francis YC was beginning their spring season with a two-day regatta for Moore 24s, Express 27s, Knarrs, Melges 24s, Folkboats and J/24s. This presents a scheduling conflict for some of the fleets. For instance, only one Folkboat, Nordic Star, stayed with the midwinters. By doing so, they got third place in the series. Somehow, they also managed to race in the Spring Keel, and got third place in that race too.

Winds built to 12-15 knots, and some big genoas gave way to smaller jibs. The day’s racing was not completely trouble-free. One crewmember fell off a PHRF 2 boat just before the finish, but held on and got back aboard quickly. And close competition resulted in at least one collision.

Two extremely long raft-ups of GGYC race boats clogged the channel at the end of the day’s racing. Meanwhile, the engineless small boats in the StFYC series were short-tacking in.

The Manuel Fagundes Seaweed Soup Perpetual Trophy itself is awarded to the boat with the fewest points in the low-point scoring series. After Saturday’s racing, two boats had three points each, last year’s champion Shaman, a Cal 40 sailed by Steve Waterloo, and the venerable 8-Meter Yucca,sailed by septuagenarian Hank Easom.

Who would get the Cup? According to the Declaration of Trust, the Cup would go to the boat with the most boats in its division. Yucca sailed in PHRF 2, which had 15 boats, while Shaman sailed in PHRF 3, with only 7 boats. So the winner is:

Hank Easom holds the Cup and the record for winning it. Since 1986 he has won it six times!

Golden Gate YC has acquired a race committee trawler (a small contributor to the afternoon’s parking problems) so they’ll have the option of starting future regattas on the water rather than from the race deck.

Many thanks to Mike Mannix and the crew of Harp for allowing our photographer to attach a camera to the headboard of their mainsail, continuing the norcalsailing.com tradition of sticking cameras in odd places. Apparently, the extra ounces aloft were not an issue for the Catalina 38.

For complete results of the Seaweed Soup Cup, see www.ggyc.com/raceresults.php. For our story on the Spring Keel Invitational, click here.