J/120 DAYENU and J/109 ELECTRA Win, Too
(San Francisco, CA)- As San Francisco awaits the verdict on whether or not the next America’s Cup will be held on its shores, the St. Francis Yacht Club’s Rolex Big Boat Series, in its 46th year, has been reminding the sailing world why the city’s namesake bay is the perfect arena for world-class racing. Sunday's “Bay Tour” race sent 98 teams on a picturesque circuit around San Francisco Bay. It included legs that featured Alcatraz Island and the Golden Gate Bridge as iconic backdrops and a downwind finish set directly in front of St. Francis Yacht Club, which allowed a parade of spinnakers to pass within shouting distance of the seawall. This was the fourth and final day of the event, which has become a hallmark of racing excellence and awarded perpetual trophies as well as Rolex Oyster Perpetual Stainless Steel Submariners to winners in six of the nine classes competing. And, with a huge turnout of J's, including the two J/125s AUGUST ICE and DOUBLE TROUBLE, the J/109 ELEKTRA and the 105/120 classes, meant the 36 J's competing in this year's RBBS comprised nearly 40% of the fleet!
“People come from all over the world to sail in this event, because it’s one of the most challenging sailing venues on the planet,” said Event Chairman Norman Davant (and the J/Boats Northern California dealer- Sail California). High winds prevailed on day one but dwindled progressively over subsequent days. Thankfully, so dwindled heavy fog, but its benefit was that it added great drama to the racing. “We sailed in fog like I’ve never sailed in for 25 years here,” said Norman, “and there were weather systems that don’t normally happen at this time of year. A lot of local-knowledge guys were scratching their heads, but it just added to the technical challenges that inspire the top people in our sport to show up and race here.”
The twenty four strong fleet of J/105s were racing for a Rolex Submariner watch and the StFYC Atlantic Perpetual Trophy. After having a rudder bearing fail (and ultimately become irreparable) on the first day, Bruce Stone (San Francisco), skippering ARBITRAGE, still managed a victory in the first race of his seven-race series, albeit with great difficulty steering. He went on to finish out the next three days with a borrowed boat from a friend (Tom Coates' successful MASQUERADE) and finished consistently enough to lead his 24-boat fleet at the end of every day. “We transferred sails, tuned the rig and kept racing,” said Stone, who has further distinguished himself this year by winning J/105 fleet series (Fleet 24 in San Francisco and Fleet 14 in Newport, R.I.) on both coasts this year. “Even though we switched to a boat we’d never sailed before, we managed to make it go fast.” TEAM ARBITRAGE finished the series with 27 points to Scooter Simmons’s (Belvedere, Calif.) 33 accumulated aboard BLACKHAWK. The balance of the top five included Jeff Littfin and John Case sailing a very nice series on MOJO to finish third, Chris Perkin's GOOD TIMIN finished fourth and Rolf Kaiser's DONKEY JACK was fifth.
The IRC D division was also racing for a Rolex Submariner watch and the StFYC Keefe-Kilborn Perpetual Trophy. Tom Brott’s (Cypress, Calif.) J/109 ELECTRA knocked Gerard Sheridan’s (San Francisco) Tupelo Honey out of first place today in IRC D (seven boats) by finishing second to Tuplelo Honey’s fifth in the last race. “We just had to put a boat between us and Tupelo, which we did when we got an advantage on them at the start,” said ELECTRA's tactician Harry Pattison (Laguna Niguel, Calif.). “Then they had trouble with their spinnaker set and jibed, taking a gamble that didn’t pay.” He described the first race of the series, a bad one for them right off the bat, with a jib halyard problem before the start that made it impossible to sail. “With a DNF that first race, we were coming from behind the whole regatta,” added Tom Brott, “but it was having a great crew and being able to concentrate on driving that did it.”
With a strong local showing of eight boats in the J/120 class, it was a tough go to stay amongst the leaders. However, with three victories in his score line, Donald Payan (Hillsborough, Calif.), skippering DAYENU, maintained his early class lead to top the eight-boat J 120 class. “Usually at this regatta it’s a nail biter going into the last leg, but going into today, we knew we could win it, since we had had fantastic boat speed,” said Payan. “The trick was execution, and it’s the old paradigm of teamwork: everybody had to be in sync.” Second overall was past winner Steve Madeira's MR MAGOO and third was John Wimer's DESDEMONA (also a past Rolex BBS winner!). BTW, the J/120's are the J/Calendar's 2010 Rolex BBS September "poster childs" (see http://www.jboats.com/sailing-calendar).
In IRC C, the two J/125s competing had a fantastic time racing each other. Flying upwind and downwind and seemingly racing amongst themselves, attached to each other by a shoe-string. In the end, Lake Tahoe sailors aboard Rick Ferris' AUGUST ICE just nipped local San Francisco favorites, Andy Costello and Peter Krueger's fire-engine red DOUBLE TROUBLE, to finish 2nd and 3rd in class. Next year they hope to get the other five or so J/125s showing up from "down the coast" to sail the Bay!For more Rolex Big Boat Series sailing information. Sailing photo credits- Erik Simonson and Heike Schwab and Rolex/ Daniel Forster.
