Originally conceived for singlehanded sailors, the numbers of those percentage wise has been dwindling over the years and the SSS thought 125 entries would be more than enough. Boy were they wrong! After the announcement of open entries, the regatta sold out in a big hurry and had a lengthy standby list!
With a series of storms hitting San Francisco Bay in the week prior, the forecast for Saturday improved. Ultimately, sunrise dawned on Saturday, the conditions were glorious, with a sun cloud mix, a nice flood and gentle south westerly to get things going!
Ultimately, the fleet split, as they are likened to do, and optimism ran high. Things would get warmer and sunnier and, well a little less windy and ghosting was an understatement for a while! But as you will see, good things come to those who wait, and indeed they did!In the end, several J/singlehanders had an amazing day. Winning the whole enchilada was Scott Sellers, sailing his J/70 IFA to a 1st to finish monohull victory, as well as Class 10 Sportboat Division win with a 15:37:21 elapsed time! In Class 1 Non-Spin PHRF, Tom Struttmann's J/105 ARRIVED took 5th place. In Class 5 Spin, Adam Spiegel's J/105 JAM SESSION took 6th, Tim Roche's J/92 ZAFF was 8th, Jim Hopp's J/88 WHITE SHADOW finished 10th, and Eric Patterson's J/105 KESTREL crossed 12th. In Class 9 Spin, we find Alex Alderkamp's J/24 BLUE JAY take 3rd on the podium! Finally, in the novel Class 16 "Power-assisted" fleet, it was Ben Mercer's J/100 EIGHT BALL winning class!
We asked Scott Sellers, the winning skipper on his J/70 1FA, to provide some color commentary on how he managed to pull off his most excellent performance. Here is his report:
"The Three Bridge Fiasco held in late January is the largest sailboat race on San Francisco Bay every year with over 300 doublehanded and singlehanded entries. The 21.0 nm pursuit race allows competitors the choice to round the 3 bridges in any order they want. First boat to finish wins.
Due to COVID restrictions in California, entries were limited to singlehanded this year and capped at 125 boats. I have done the race numerous times doublehanded on my J/70 1FA, but this would be my first time attempting to race the J/70 singlehanded. I rigged up some bungee cords to the tiller that I could control while launching the spinnaker up front that worked pretty well.Based on the wind and tide conditions, I chose a counterclockwise course of Bay Bridge, Richmond Bridge and then Golden Gate Bridge. By the time I got to the Richmond Bridge, I had passed all the smaller boats that started earlier including a gaggle of Moore 24s and Express 27s. I was briefly passed by a Wylie 39 on the beat to the Golden Gate but passed them back on the run to the finish to win the 100-boat monohull division. In the light to moderate conditions that we had, the J/70 was an easy boat to singlehand upwind and downwind!"
Thanks to Presure-drop.us and Scott for the sailing photos and stories. Pressuredrop.us Sailing photo & story contributions Sailing photo credits- "Slackwater" on Flickr