Friday, May 31, 2013

THREE BIG DOGS Snatches Cinco de Mayo Regatta

J/24 sailing off Santa Barbara, CA in Cinco de Mayo Regatta (Santa Barbara, CA)- One of the highlights of the Santa Barbara sailing season is always the Cinco de Mayo celebration.  The event always attracts a good fleet of one-design classes.  In fact, Cinco de Mayo and the Fiesta Cup celebrated later in July are the highlights of the summertime sailing season for locals due to the enormous influx of sailors looking forward to the time-honored celebrations associated with each event.

Host of the Cinco de Mayo Regatta is the Santa Barbara Sailing Club, a wonderful "home-grown" sailing organization dedicated to promote primarily one-design class sailboat racing in the Santa Barbara area. Perhaps most importantly, it primary objective has been to provide affordable access to the sport of sailboat racing for the general sailing public.

J/24 sailing upwind offshore Santa Barbara, CA in Cinco de Mayo RegattaAttending this year's event was one of the strongest J/24 one-design turnouts in quite some time.  Sailing were a dozen J/24s with hot competition, especially for the top of the leaderboard.  Past J/24 North American Champion, Pat Toole and crew on THREE BIG DOGS, just barely managed to hang on to win the J/24 crown on a tie-breaker with identical scores!  The 3BD crew took a 3-1-1-3-2-2-1-2-1 scoreline for nine races to win. Giving them a serious run for the money was Klatt's JADED with a 1-2-3-1-4-1-2-1-2 tally for equal 13.0 pts for their eight counter races.  How was the tie-breaker broken?  Well after identical counts for 1st, 2nd and 3rds, it goes to who-beat-who in the last race!  Great racing to all!  Taking third overall while watching the histrionics taking place in front was Zimmerman sailing the mighty SVENJA. Fourth was Baurley's CRITTER and fifth was Susan Taylor's TAKE FIVE.   For more Cinco de Mayo Regatta sailing information