J/109 Wins Double-handed Farallones Race

(San Francisco, CA)- As has happened over the course of this famously tough race, the fleet was greeted by the same forecast as the J/Fest crews were-- light in the morning and increasing velocity to a "good breeze" by late afternoon.  What no forecaster seemed to take into account were two very critical elements, particularly as they applied to the hapless double-handers headed outside the fabled "Golden Gate" to arm-wrestle their wheels and tillers over the great monster known as the "potato patch" and head around some islands renowned as much for feeding fat little seals off its shores to those scourges of the deep, the Great White Shark.  One element was how HOT it was going to get inland, the great bread-basket of California known as the Great Valley and the second element was how strong the currents would be on the ebb due to excessive rains and snow melt coming from the very same Sierra Nevada mountain ranges.  The combination proved yet again to be pretty toxic.

At start of the Farallones Race, it was blowing 15-20 knots. But, by the time the fleet was outside of the Golden Gate Bridge, it was blowing more like 20-40 knots with huge, breaking waves.  Sailing in the fleet was a J/105, a J/109, a J/120 and the J/125 DOUBLE TROUBLE (DT), Andy Costello's speedster on the Bay.  DT started the race, broke their rudder quadrant and returned home-- here's Andy's report to Sailing Anarchy:

"Well DT had a great start and we were first out of the Bay with "Trunk Monkey", the only other mono that managed to exit the bay without being caught at the start by the tide. Once we cleared Point Bonita we were the northern most boat in the fleet and were taking pretty steep waves off the shoals but managed to get thru pretty well besides getting banged around a bit. The wind steadily built to the low 20's just off Bonita, then as we progressed a mile or so out out the waves and wind continued to increase up to solid 26s with gusts close to 30 knots. By this point we were trying to slow DT down and she was just jumping off the backs of the steep waves and hard into the next. I thought our rig was going to come down every time we leaped off the next wave. Pat went down to get his handheld GPS to get a heading for the Rock and I was up alone for a while.  We leaped off a huge wave and when we came down the boat came down with such force I heard a crack from the steering quadrant area.  At the same time our back-stay handle was flung overboard into the ocean!! Wow!! ( Take note- would have been smart to a have a tether on that!).  Now the rig was un-adjustable, great!?  We sailed along for a good 4 or 5 more miles waiting to see if the wind would increase or subside, during that time the creaks from the steering area were coming and going depending on load. I asked Pat what the heading was for the island and he gave me the news that our only mapping GPS had bit the dust!! 12 miles out from Farallones Islands, we decided to give up on our attempt of first monohull to finish (there was NO ONE else in sight)!

We continued upwind until an inbound freighter took our stern and followed him until we knew we were in the channel back to Golden Gate Bridge. On our way back in we sailed for 10 minutes before we saw the Open 50 coming upwind. I think we would have had our shot at overall honors as our J/125 has the legs downwind and the Open 50 had some catching up to do (like 15 miles worth!). He probably would have caught us but our start had paid off huge. We hugged the green Markers all the way in dodging 3 in-bound and out-bound freighter's.  Under main alone we wee trying to keep the boat as unloaded as we could, but we still hit over 18 knots on multiple occasions (a few times the speedo would be reading 16, 17 and then it would drop down even though the boat was still accelerating-- only then did I realize the speedos were both completely out of the water!! Ha!!). The J/125 is a joy to drive downwind when your not worrying about your rudder!"  Thanks goodness these two (Andy and Pat) made it home safely.

Hanging tough in the same conditions were the J/105, J/109 and J/120.  A bunch of guys from Chicago had brought their J/105 GONZO to the Bay for the winter sailing series.  Apparently, they've had a great time sailing on the Bay in everything from light air to the classic nukin' conditions the Bay can offer-- cart-wheeling AC72's anyone??  In any event, Ken Garch sailed GONZO to a very respectable 2nd in Class 4 ULDB, sailing the course in just 8 hours.  It was their first time sailing this grueling race, not bad for a bunch of newbies from a lake in the Midwest.

The top finishing J was Howard Turner's J/109 SYMMETRY from Santa Cruz, sailing an elapsed time of 7:46:26 to beat the famously fast offshore J/105 speedsters on elapsed time.  Howard's SYMMETRY won Class 3 Monohull by nearly an hour over three other famously fast Express 37s.

In the same class at DOUBLE TROUBLE was the J/120 JAMANI sailed by Sean Mulvihill and friend.  JAMANI had an elapsed time of 7:54:27 to get a fourth in class and finish behind the J/105 and J/109 on corrected overall.    For more Doublehanded Farallones sailing results