(Santa Barbara, CA)- This year’s Santa Barbara to King Harbor race,
co-hosted by Santa Barbara YC and King Harbor YC, started off the 81nm
distance race Friday noon time in a drifter. The weather forecast was
not promising, to say the least. The more weather models anyone looked
at, the more variance there was, leading to all kinds of confusion as to
what strategy might pay off in the end. Some models showed no wind.
Others forecasted southwesters going to west then back again. Still
others showed westerlies going to northwest and blowing 20 kts! In
short, it looked like it was either going to be a roll of the dice, or
yet again another “classic” SB-KH strategy. The reality was a mix of everything. The race starts just off Stearns Wharf in Santa Barbara, heads 31nm through the Channel Islands, leaving Anacapa Island to port, then 50nm to the finish at the Kings Harbor entrance. While the start was light, most boats took off on a light air beat on starboard tack hoping to stay somewhat close to the rhumbline course of 150 degrees. Some boats tacked off onto port shortly after the start to head towards the source of the new breeze, hoping to steal a march against those boats that kept working towards Anacapa on starboard. In short, the boats that stayed on starboard and kept up their speed caught the new breeze around 2-2:30pm and fetched the gap carrying spinnakers in a building WNW breeze in the 10-15 kts range! Once at Anacapa, the straits between the islands produced very strange wind effects. In fact, the wind nearly “shut the door” on the fleet as it went back forward to the WSW and very light, some boats even had to drop chutes and hoist genoas to make it through.
After
rounding Anacapa Island, some boats went straight, sailing about 10
degrees high of the rhumbline course on starboard to Kings Harbor buoy.
Others did the “same old, same old” and gybed as soon as they could
with breeze and headed at nearly 90 degrees to the rhumbline course in a
beeline to the Malibu shore. For those boats, they hit the shoreline
somewhere near Pt Mugu, far, far north of the usual “meeting point”-
Malibu’s Pt Dume! Apparently, most boats that got to Pt Dume simply
gybed back onto starboard and headed more or less to the finish line at
Kings Harbor. An example of that course is what you see here!Making the most of the confusion was the J/33 TIGGER, skippered by Fred and Suzanne Cottrell from Kings Harbor YC. TIGGER won her PHRF B class by nearly 10 minutes corrected time, finishing at 5:39 AM on Saturday. Taking fourth in their class was Tom Cullen’s J/109 FUEGO, finishing at 6:10 AM.
In ULDB A class, Dr Laura Schlessinger’s beautifully prepared J/125 WARRIOR from Santa Barbara YC had an ongoing battle with a Santa Cruz 70, Santa Cruz 50 and a Farr 400. In the end, the entire fleet hit just about every corner one could find on the race course; both on the approach to Anacapa Island as well as the last 50nm from Anacapa to Kings Harbor. With a fleet so dispersed, it was nearly impossible to gauge which strategies were working as the boats disappeared into the haze. Despite boats zipping far northeast to Pt Mugu or way southwest to Catalina Island (seemingly almost Hawaii!), Dr Laura’s team managed to pull off a third in class. To say it was an atypical race for course management and strategy would be a slight understatement!
Similarly, in ULDB B class, the J/111 sailed by Glenn Griley from Kings Harbor YC saw similar strategies being exercised in their group. Just about all their boats also explored “corner shots” from Anacapa to Kings Harbor! In the end, they managed a 5th in class. Talk about extremes, the winner took nearly 12 hours to complete the course, finishing just after midnight, while a boat rated just 20 sec/mi slower took double that time- 24 hours- and finishing just after noon Saturday!! For more Santa Barbara- King Harbor sailing information
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