(San Francisco, CA)- Starting on June 17th, it took no trouble at all for Andy Costello's rabble rousers on the bright red J/125 speedster called DOUBLE TROUBLE to finish this classic feeder race in 27 hours from San Francisco to Santa Barbara, finishing in time for lunch on Sunday at Santa Barbara YC and, most importantly, to celebrate winning Class A by over an hour on corrected time!
This year's race started off on a gorgeous day sailing out of San Francisco Bay, under the Golden Gate Bridge and turning left past Land's End (thank goodness turning before the God-forsaken and notorious "Potato Patch"). The race down the coast to Santa Barbara was fun and challenging, featuring white knuckle spinnaker reaching off the treacherous Pt. Conception and Pt. Sur, to ghosting in the light morning breezes through the Channel Islands to finish off Santa Barbara-- just about what the "postcard" promoting the race said it would be.
The J fleet sailed well. In addition DOUBLE TROUBLE's winning ways, Tom Holthus' Transpac-winning J/145 BAD PAK didn't appear to be up-to-speed and dropped to seventh on corrected, in fact even finishing behind DOUBLE TROUBLE on elapsed time. Sadly, Dr. Laura Schlessinger did not participate in the race with her J/125 WARRIOR. Howard Turner's J/109 SYMMETRY finished a respectable fifth in Class B and Peter Molnar's J/105 POSEIDON turned out not to be a giant killer, finishing seventh in class. For more Coastal Cup sailing results. Photo credits- Erik Simonson