Foggy Sailing in the Berkeley Midwinters

December 13, 2010

So, where was the mostly sunny?? For the weekend of December 11-12, 2010, the weather prognosticators got the amount of wind about right (not a lot), the directions sorta right (west-northwestish), but they flunked on “mostly sunny”. Also, the mention of "fog until 10:00 a.m." was a bit shy of reality.

Aboard Don Newman's Olson 30 Corsair, one of three racing. ©2010 norcalsailing.com

On Saturday, 60 boats in eight divisions in the Berkeley Yacht Club Midwinters were started on time. As mentioned above the amount of wind was light. Off to GOC on the Olympic Circle, they went on a windward/leeward eight-mile course.

The Cal 20s put together a one design fleet for the first time in recent memory. These ones are Red Baron (left) and Fjordling. Only two of the five boats were able to finish in the light conditions. ©2010 norcalsailing.com

Can O'Whoopass crew Paul Sutchek prepares for the race. 'The Can' won the Cal 20 division. ©2010 Richard vonEhrenkrook

At 14:24:31, the first boat (the Bilafer Family’s Henderson 30 Family Hour TNG) finished. At that instant, the fog swooped down onto the water and for the next hour and 20 minutes, during which 45 more boats finished, we could not actually see the finish buoy. Most of the racers, in making their determination of which end of the line was favored, concluded correctly that the end that had the committee boat people with the giggles, whistles and guns, was the end to aim for. We did have one entrant radio in that he was at the finish buoy “Now!” This was a good thing – we could not see him at all. Some boats overstood the line and seemed to rely primarily on our boisterous, noisy committee to locate us. Ten boats either got lost or figured that they wouldn’t make the 5:00 p.m cut off and radioed in their DNF. In conclusion, all 60 boats were accounted for.

Express 27s had the biggest one design division on Saturday, with 17 boats racing. These are Libra (foreground) and Dianne. ©2010 norcalsailing.com

Sunday, of course, was different. It was still missing the “mostly sunny,” but instead there was no wind to begin with. After 55 minutes, we were able to get rolling. The wind was much more robust than Saturday, so we selected a 9.4 nm course. (We figured we could shorten if necessary.) For this day, the fog actually dissipated and there was a bit of sun. The wind maintained its robustness and all 27 entries finished, well before the deadline.

Results are posted at www.berkeleyyc.org.

- Bobbi Tosse, Race Chair, Berkeley YC