Saturday, September 3, 2016

Windy, Grey J/105 Swiftsure Cup

J/105 sailing Swiftsure Cup on San Francisco Bay (San Francisco, CA)- The Phyllis Kleinman Swiftsure Cup took place this past weekend on San Francisco Bay, hosted by St Francis YC.  This memorial regatta has been a popular one in the Bay area for years and is always well-attended by the J/105 one-design class as well as PHRF and ORR offshore racers.

Winning the huge nineteen-boat J/105 class was Phil Laby’s GODOT with an amazingly consistent 4-1-2-3-1 record for 11 pts.  The Simmons Family, led by skipper Ryan, took their famous BLACKHAWK and guided it around the race track in good order to take the silver with yet another all top five record, posting 5-5-1-2-3 for 16 pts.  After these two boats, the scores were all over the map, inconsistency for some reason or another due to all manner of extenuating circumstances.  Third was Bruce Stone & Nicole J/105s sailing Swiftsure Cup off Golden Gate BridgeBreault’s ARBITRAGE with a 3-3-5-1-10 for 22 pts, just squeaking out that scenario by one point over Adam Spiegel’s JAM SESSION with a 2-4-7-4-6 for 23 pts.  Fifth was Tom Kennelly’s WONDER with a 6-10-4-5-2 for 27 pts.

The PHRF “sportsboat” division saw Gorkem Ozcelebi’s J/111 DOUBLE IGIT sail fast to just miss taking the class win by two points. After five races, they were tied on points for first place overall, however, a 5th in the final race dropped them into the silver position.  Meanwhile, Dick Swanson’s J/111 BAD DOG didn’t make the first race (scoring a DNC), but won two races on their way to finishing 4th overall!   Sailing photo credits- Chris Ray   For more J/105 Swiftsure Cup sailing information