2012 AYC Champagne I, Sucia Island Race/Cruise re-cap

April 21^st drew 5 boats with race fans ready for a gorgeous ride from A-town’s refinery dock up the pond to Sucia Island where we’d be greeted by the loud shirts and awesome food of the AYC cruising fleet. The pre-described starting area was found to be a literal windless hole so Commodore Mac and Pangaea led the racers motoring north to the nearest spot of pressure. With the cruising out of the way early a line was set up off Jack Island’s red nun and Andy hailed a passing AYC boat over to provide start horns.

While this event was part of the 2012 AYC race package there seemed a relaxed in approach to the day by the racing boats. Pete and the 50+ club on Passépartout put up new ocean going sails and practiced fancy offshore maneuvers while Andy Schwenk shellacked the 4 pint-sized stowaways aboard Wild Rumpus in plenty of SPF 30. Walt and Jerry were complimented by the lovely Kim Kelley on Syn-di-cat and Emoyeni made it a family oriented day with a crew adorned in matching sweatshirts – Skipper Chris enjoyed the company of his 1^st mate Kyle, the Gybe Princess Nicole, and the Gin Goddess (who exclusively drank rum) Joyce!

Getting off the start Syn-di-cat port tacked the fleet while everyone else made way towards Jack Island. The fleet would split further north with Pangaea and Passépartout making way to the east by Vendovi Island while Rumpus, Syn-di-cat, and Emoyeni looked for better pressures by Sinclair. Steady north-westerly breeze filled in and made it obvious the butts would be warming the rails all the way to the finish at Danger Reef.

Current relief was key till the shift to flood and the Lummi shore had the right flavor so boats eventually converged there with Pangaea leading the charge. Emoyeni and Syndicat had a good duel getting to the Lummi with the Catalina being able to keep a step or two ahead of us on the Islander. As we approached Lummi rocks and the current started to go neutral we decided it was time for a bold move and took the long hitch back towards Pt Lawrence looking for a lift off Orcas.

Passépartout was already on the west side of Rosario, Rumpus was cooking towards the sisters, while Pangaea and Syn-di-cat favored the back eddy along Lummi working north. Initially pressure suffered till it didn’t and the currents sucked until they didn’t. Around Matia Island we hit a solid patch of breeze and carried west with a fresh round of drinks. Pangaea appeared to be finishing up while Pete and Andy laid their final tacks to the finish – and then the breeze went soft.

What we thought was as much as a 20 minute lead on Syndicat, who was last spotted cleaning up an oil spill off Cherry Pt, started getting reeled back into the negative column with every delicate 2kn tack to make Eagle Pt. We were acutely aware there was solid pressure north of Matia and Walt n’ Jerry were in it. Sure nuff’ as Rolfe cove emerged on the north side of the island so did the Catalina blazing on layline to the finish with us just 50yds below. We finished a mere 3&1/2 minutes behind Syn-di-cat and updated our charts renaming Rolfe cove to ROFL cove – what a finish after splitting from the Catalina!

In summary it was quite a weekend of great weather, although chilly, and good sailing if you like the upwind stuff. Probably a bad weekend for the scorer to quit sniffing glue as the phoned in results Saturday night were a bit suspect. Upon final review, Pangaea earned a bullet with Wild Rumpus, powered by cheetos and purple gatorade, took 2^nd. Passépartout lumbered into 3^rd place and Syn-di-cat sailed, as Andy would say, more quicklier than Emoyeni for 4^th and 5^th places respectively.

2012 AYC Tulip Regatta – Breakdown, musings, and other blithering what-not

It seems Anacortes Yacht Club regattas are a lot like an AC/DC concert in that people will tell you every year that this regatta was the best one yet… And I’m hard pressed to argue with them. Tulip Regatta 2012 kicked off Saturday morning to fickle pressure, glassy water but patience was awarded when a steady breeze filled in from the west and got off 3 races for the day. Sunday came with twice the pressure than the day before and after a little delay while a tanker was set the race committee fired off another 3 races for keelboats and pitchforks… If you were trapped out on a Hobie F18 you got an extra race each day for being so damn fast…

F18’s are exceptionally fast for boats without a convenient place to mount a beer cooler. Team Storm took home 1^st place with an array of solid sailing and distractingly colorful canvas, followed by the crew who just started shaving in Barely 18 with 2^nd place, and Laser Tag in 3^rd.

In the big boat PHRF fleet Teddy Bear mauled her competition taking 1^st place with four bullets in 6 races, followed by the fancy Bellingham Beneteau 36.7 Vitesse in 2^nd, and the freshly painted Baltic 39 Pangaea in 3^rd.

Smaller and sportier PHRF boats in fleet 3 saw the mighty Viper 640 KAA just barely edge the boys and girl aboard the Wavelength 24 Surfin Bird for 1^st and 2^nd respectively. Back in the mix with a fresh new bottom the J30 Celebration partied her way into 3^rd place.

In the “Alcoholics Among-us” fleet, what might be called “upset of century” this side of the Swinomish cut saw SC27 Giant Slayer, with a few new Ullman sails in her inventory, put the hurt on local favorites Wild Rumpus with 5 bullets in 6 races. Rumpus settled for 2^nd place and the boat thats name just changed but still takes the same amount of syllables to get through it (6 by my count), Ziggy and the Outlaws sailed to the podium in 3^rd place.

With the largest PHRF fleet of the regatta, fleet 5 saw hot and heavy competition at the top with a mere one (1) point separating 1^st through 3^rd places. With 12.5 points the always well sailed and well rum’d Catalina 27 Syn-di-cat took 1^st place honors over fellow Catalina 27 Handyman with 13 points for their 2^nd place efforts. And taking 3^rd place with 13.5 points back to Bellingham was the mighty San Juan 28 Hoerndag.

Lastly in the San Juan 24 fleet, another dominating performance from the boat that seems to sail with an imaginary 6 more feet of waterline than her sister ships, 1^st place went to the Magic Juan winning all 6 races. 2^nd place was hard fought for and the mighty Merlin did just enough to take silver from Renaissance in 3^rd place.

Lots of fun to be had on and off the course.

• Only one recorded blowout of the regatta – Tom Dixon’s favorite camo shorts. Welcome back to the bow Tom, the back of the boat is always screwing you.

• I’m guessing that Wild Rumpus consistently empties the shelves of ACE Hardware’s duct tape stock for their outfits.

• I think Shannon Buys should be restricted from purchasing a new main for Magic Juan until he wears out his old one.

• Pangaea is sporting a restoration paint job that relives the days back when she saved two of every living creature from the great flood. It turned out really nice!

• Nice to see Team “The Kraken” keep their rig up for a whole regatta!

• In news of “things that have never happened in Anacortes before”, while they weren’t exactly “kicked-out”, an Emoyeni crew member was definitely denied re-entry into the brown lantern Saturday night (or maybe Sunday morning). Alcohol was a factor.

• Lucky Duck, with guest power boating crew, sent up a duck-dodge style kite hoist designed for laughs but not for speed. They actually managed to get the sideways kite drawing for a second or two. Boat speed readings might have been converted to mph on Saturday.

• Did anybody mention that this year was the “Best Tulip Regatta Ever?”

• Winner, winner, Salmon Dinner! Walt Meagher (whose mustache curls naturally like that) and a small army of volunteers served up 80lbs of the tasty stuff this year!

• John Gunn, feeling significantly under the weather, raced the whole weekend aboard Little Annie single handed. He may have also tied one hand behind his back to give the fleet a fightin chance!

• Eric Beemer has really big friends to help sail a small boat so well…

• I think everyone can agree that the boat with the best name of the regatta goes to the newly christened “Thunder Muscle” of the SC27 fleet. Of course it’s a yellow one.

• I’d like to have clever things to say about the Hobie Tigers but they were too quick for me to observe anything besides impressive seamanship and “holy shit those things accelerate!” 

• Battleshots was a great and/or terrible idea. Stephanie should be commended and/or punished.