July 30, 2014

Sixteen Tunas came out for their National Championship Regatta on July 25-27 in about even numbers from Santa Cruz Yacht Club and hosting Monterey Peninsula Yacht Club, along with the reigning 2013 national champion Garth Copenhaver's lone San Francisco Bay-based boat, Oreo. Garth could not resist the opportunity to defend his title, braving Friday's Hwy. 101 traffic. One other SF Bay skipper, Deb Fehr of Meliki, borrowed Tara from Chuck Murray at SCYC and raced with her all-female crew in multi-color tutus. Yes, tutus.

Tutus on Tara. ©2014 Kristen Soetebier

"The weather in Monterey was stellar for Nationals," said Deb. "Coming from the SF Bay where the normal racing couture is full foulies, we had definitely over-packed. We spent the entire weekend racing in t-shirts and shorts!"

Chris Hofman's Odonata goes for clear air. ©2014 Kristen Soetebier

The fog managed to stay off the course all weekend, even if the whales, otters and harbor seals didn’t. Occasional spouts could be seen in the area. Very light winds, around 8 knots, were clocking all over the place for the practice race on Friday, but they behaved better for the racing, increasing to about 10 knots at the start from about 250 degrees on Saturday and increasing slightly to 13 knots by the end of the day. On Sunday the winds were a little stiffer after a brief morning shower and more whales, increasing to about 16 knots from 290 degrees by the end of Race 5. Seas were flat in the eyes of the locals, but the SF sailors were treated to the usual gentle ocean swell of 1-2 feet.

Hamachi and Shanman round the leeward gate in opposite directions. Hamachi was the Monterey Bay boat that made it up to San Francisco Bay for the 2013 Nationals – and they sailed up and back. ©2014 Kristen Soetebier

The first two races and the fourth were roughly 3.2 miles long with a windward mark, leeward gate rounding, and downwind finish, and the final race each day was approximately 4.2 miles long with two leeward gate roundings and an upwind finish at the weather mark designed to let the racers have an easy downwind cruise back to the dock and the keg sponsored by Pineapple Sails.

PRO Mike Gross fills in some of the details from each race:

"Race 1 had 291 and 384 poking their bows across the line with less than 5 seconds to go and then clearing before the start. The was a 7 minute 3 second spread at the finish with 817 209 and 539 overlapped for 7th (8 and 9) and 266 and 641 overlapped for 12/13.

"Race 2 had all 16 boats in the first row at the start with 5044 and 19 poking their bows over with about 5 seconds to go and then promptly clearing. 539 and 291 got luffed over with about a second to go. 539 cleared right at the start signal and 291 got held out to be the only X flag for day 1; 291 cleared as the fleet sailed by and clawed his way back to mid fleet. Fleet spread at the finish was 4 minutes and change as I recall.

"Just before Race 3, a left shift in the breeze had the RC moving the windward mark to square the course while the boats were in sequence. R3 was a five-legged course with a windward finish to send everyone home on a comfortable reach.

"Sunday had the breeze at 290 - taking out most of the left favor that is known so well by locals. The Race 4 start had 384 poke her bow across the line down at the pin with 3 seconds to go and immediately clear. 5194 in the middle of the line wasn't so fortunate and drew an X flag after the start. Finish spread was 2 minutes and change with 453/817 and 5044 overlapped at the finish. The 817/ 453 overlap was bow to bow with the boats changing place twice in the last 100 feet as the swell pushed them along.

"Race 5 had the RC move the windward mark out an extra quarter mile – five legs and then a reach home. 817 and 539 were bow to bow overlapped at the finish with 817 shooting head to wind at the pin end to eke out a two-foot advantage. Finish spread was 4 minutes 53 seconds."

To help you figure out who's who in Mike's report, here's a snapshot of the results.©2014 Kristen Soetebier

"Two individual recalls, no generals or postponements," summed up the PRO. "One red flag noted by RC was for a three boat incident (no contact). Since one boat spun a penalty it didn't go to hearing. Mark boats and signal boat observed a good number of boats spinning penalties, which kept things out of the protest room and allowed all to enjoy the party lubricant provided by Pineapple Sails."

"With 16 boats, the start line was tight and not for the faint of heart," said Deb Fehr. "If you were not near the line at the start, you were stuck in dirty air, which made it impossible to point and difficult to get up to speed. We had two such starts. If you were a little anxious and jumped the gun (over early), getting back to the start line was another problem. Another one of our mucked-up starts. With boats on both sides and behind you, there's nowhere to go. We eased the sails, slowed down, and looked for an opening to turn around and start again. By that time, the damage was done. It's very difficult to play catch up with such a competitive fleet. The bright side of being in the back of the fleet – you get to watch some close encounters and exciting mark roundings!"

There was a little bit of a shuffle as you can see from the standings. Fleet starts were exceptional and all boats were competitive to the line. It was remarked there was no "second group." So competitive were the starts, there resulted a few OCSs and some fouls that turned out to be decisive. The point spread of the top boats ended up really close. At the end of Saturday, Oreo was in first place by two points, followed by Bob Comstock's Rick’s Place, and Kate Conway’s Cnidarian in third. However, after the shake up on Sunday, and careful calculating, with second, third, and fourth only one point away from each other, Rick’s Place emerged to claim the championship by three points over second. Phil Vandenburg's Maybe jumped up from fourth into second, and Oreo fell to third. Fourth and fifth were also awarded, the former to Cnidarian just one point below third, and fifth was tied between Leprechaun and Schock Therapy, the tie broken by Leprechaun's second place win in the third race on Saturday.

The winning boat, Rick's Place. ©2014 Kristen Soetebier

Oreo with Garth Copenhaver driving and Jan Grygier on trim consistently did pin-end starts that worked well for them. But, in the fourth race they hit the pin and finished ninth, which, with no throw-outs, dropped them into third.
"We did surprisingly well considering Jan and I decided to race the Nationals together in Monterey a couple of weeks before the event," said Garth. "Jan and I race against each other all the time but had never sailed with each other before. None of us on the boat had ever sailed together. Regarding hitting the pin on the fourth race I tend to think of my error as a karmic fruition from last year's Nationals when I applied a match racing trick that ended in Michael Andrews' Bonito getting over early. This year Bob Comstock told me the night before that he was going to go after me. But I was overly focused on the other boats and not focused enough on distance to the line. I hope those Monterey and Santa Cruz competitors come to the Bay next year."

Oreo trailered down from SF Bay. ©2014 Kristen Soetebier

Comstock and his wife Monika, who raced Rick’s Place with a friend, Pip, whom Bob has known since at least 1978 from Boy Scouts, couldn’t have asked for a nicer gift for their 29th wedding anniversary, which they also happened to celebrate on Sunday, than the lovely first place crystal vase! They kept themselves in the top five finishes without any errors and won the first race each day, and that was enough to upset Oreo. The Eddie Rideout perpetual trophy awarded to the oldest skipper went to Jeff Carter on Tickle.

The Santana fleet held their annual SODA meeting, and MPYC served a delicious buffet dinner while later on showing off their annual Summer of Love party complete with '60s attire and rockin’ House Band.

Keepin' it groovy at MPYC after the regatta. ©2014 Julia Siudyla

Plans are in the works to hopefully hold Nationals on the SF Cityfront next year.

– Kirsten Soetebier, Pueo, Santana 22

For more on Tuna sailing, see www.santana22.com. For more photos, see https://flic.kr/s/aHsk1bci2S.