J/70s & J/111s Thrash City Front Course(San Francisco Bay, CA)- City Front sailing at its finest! Last weekend the St. Francis Yacht Club hosted the J/70 Pacific Coast Championship and the J/111 Sportboat Regatta. Bennet Greenwald's Team PERSEVERANCE prevailed after three days of racing over the 9 race series with an impressive 6 bullets. Conditions overall were mild, warm, and sunny on the City Front making this San Diegan right at home! And, feeling right at home on the Bay was St Francis YC member Peter Wagner, guiding his J/111 SKELETON KEY to six straight bullets to win the J/111 class!
Congrats to Team PERSEVERANCE (pictured L-R including crew Dirk Johnson, owner/driver Bennet Greenwald, Ben Mercer and Victor Diaz de Leon) and to all the competitors who came. It was a small but highly competitive J/70 fleet with challenging and rewarding racing.
Second place overall went to David Schumann’s Team Bottle Rocket with crew Cody Shevitz, Terre Layton, Shana Phelan and Willem Van Waay. Sailing with a crew of five paid off for this team, as did their two days of training with Willem Van Waay before the event.
Fleet
19 was happy to welcome Paul Cayard back to the J/70 fleet almost 10
months after sailing with one of Italy’s top Italian J/70 Teams Calvi
Network at the J/70 Worlds in San Francisco last fall. If you may
recall, Cayard is a Whitbread Around the World winner, Star World
Champion and America’s Cup helmsman sailing on Chris Kostanecki’s
JENNIFER. Cayard will continue to sail with Fleet 19s Team JENNIFER in
the J/70 Worlds in Sardinia and they found the PCCs to be a great tune
up for their newly formed Worlds team. Team JENNIFER came in third
overall at the PCCs.Tom Kassberg’s Team PICKLED HERRING is always a top contender and this weekend was no different. Kassberg came in fourth place overall at the PCCs.
Several
Corinthian teams sailed the PCCs including Tracy Usher's Team CHRISTINE
ROBIN. Despite some epic and memorable tacking duels up the City Front
with the top teams, they managed to land 5th overall just one point out
of 4th place and were the first Corinthian team.It was a family affair for Corinthian Justin Foox’s Team FLOTEK. At the PCCs, in addition to sailing with his wife Shar, which he does regularly, Justin also sailed with his sister and brother-in-law who were visiting from Australia. His sister and brother-in-law hadn’t sailed a J/70 before this weekend and loved the boats, no surprise! Justin and his sister hadn’t sailed together in 40 years so it was an especially fun experience for them all.
Further
enhancing the PCCs were daily debriefs from sailing Pro’s Willem Van
Waay and Victor Diaz de Leon who ran informative debriefs post racing
each day for the J/70s, which one attendee referred to as “liquid
gold.” In addition, Paul Cayard had nothing but praises for the pros
and their debriefs.As always StFYC Race Committee executed flawless race course management. In addition to the gorgeous overall and Corinthian perpetual trophy, donated last year by Justin Kromelow’s Team LOOSE LUCY, the StFYC provided frames with plaques for the winners with line drawings of the J/70.
Gorgeous images of the racing with the San Francisco skyline and the Golden Gate Bridge in the background say it all... Here is the link to photos from the 2017 PCCs by Leslie Richter. Here’s another photo link from the 2017 PCCs by Chris Ray. For more J/70 Pacific Coast Championship sailing information Add to Flipboard Magazine.
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