Island Yacht Club’s Silver Eagle is one of the great long distance Bay races. This race has waxed and waned through the years and hasn't picked up a whole lot of entries lately. And that's a shame because it's one of the most tactically challenging and equipment-intensive races you can do without going out the Gate. And you won't get seasick. The ‘Classic’ is a 47-nm romp around the three Bays (San Pablo, San Francisco and South) for the fast boats. It used to be a much longer course but was shortened in 2002. The speed-challenged boats go for 30 nm, and both divisions start and finish off the Golden Gate Yacht Club.

This year it looked like conditions would be light, but it ended up being a splendid day and evening on the Bay. Timo Bruck, who sailed his J/120 Twist, tells the story: "This was the first time for me with the new ‘shortened’ course, which is ‘only’ 47.4 nautical miles long. We sailed shorthanded, with only four crew on the boat, which consisted of myself, Ian (veteran Twist bowman), Brian (former Mini owner, sails on small keelboats like Antrims), and Chris (until yesterday, a non-sailor). We finished the race in 9 hours, 34 minutes.

 

“We made a few critical mistakes at the first few marks, getting the crew organized and figuring out if/when to deploy the kite. After a while, we got our act together (Brian did great forecasting what the wind was gonna do and where we should go), but we had already let most of our competition past by that point. Oh, and the spinnaker was always on the wrong side of the boat, so all sets were windward sets. - a great Magoo trick!” (Former champion Mr. Magoo never makes mistakes.)

 

“There were at least three restarts in the race,” continued Timo, “when the wind dropped to zero, and all the boats that we fought to pass caught up, making it impossible to get enough distance from them to win the race (at PHRF 48, we were the fastest-rated boat on the course).

 

“Most of the sailing was delightful. The blast reach across the slot in 23 knots of wind with the Heavy #1 jib flying and a swarm of 110 kitesurfers doing the Crissy to Berkeley downwinder in front of us was somewhat terrifying. The last two legs of the race brought us some rain (what? in July?) and some pretty rainbows (one of which seemed to originate from the sewage treatment plant on Treasure Island). The sunset, lighting of Pacific Heights and the City was absolutely beautiful."

With very few non-finishers counted it looked like a good year for a very fun race that has been running for 34 years now. Let's hope #35 will be as good. For complete results, see www.iyc.org/raceinfo.htm.

For more, go on to ‘Silver Eagle Revisited’.