Santa Cruz Fall Regatta Report

Written by Mike Holt:

Santa Cruz Yacht Club hosted a 505 regatta this last weekend but unfortunately most of you had better things to do than sail in 15-20 knots with warm sunshine and great waves. Most certainly your loss!

However six boats made it to the start line for the first race and Santa Cruz delivered the best weekend of sailing on a long time. Great race management from Beau Vrolyk and his team with straight forward windward leeward courses with a gate in the beat. Unusually for Santa Cruz the course was not right hand biased, in fact we felt we gained by going left on most beats and certainly watching the compass was important. For a change my view of the race track was from "the wire" hanging on the side for Steve Anderes who kindly stepped in to sail with me.

At the end of day one Mike Smith and Jeff Miller had a perfect 1,1,1 score although they did have to cover us up the last beat of the second race! Steve and I ended the day with a 2,2,2 score and to complete the symmetry Evan Diola and Eb Russell had a 3,3,3 score. However the racing was close and exciting with some really full on wire running and tight mark roundings.

Sunday was pretty similar to Saturday, starting just a shade lighter but by the time we were going up the first beat of the day the wind had filled in to a good 15+. This was a more typical go right upwind, left downwind day than though which nearly caught Mike and Jeff out, heading right downwind while we gybe set. However when it all matters at the finish line Mike and Jeff maintained their perfect score and Steve and I maintained our less perfect run of 2's. However Reeve and Pat managed to pass Evan and Eb in the last race to ruin their run of 3's!

A real shame more of you did not make it to Santa Cruz, we had absolutely perfect conditions.

Results:

1. 9082  Mike Smit Jeff Miller  1  1  1  1  1  5
2. 9002  Mike Holt Steve Anderes  2  2  2  2  2  10
3. 8829  Evan Diola Eben Russell  3  3  3  3  4  16
4. 8967  Cameron McDonald Philippe Kahn  5  4  4  5  5  23
5. 8878  Reeve Dunne Pat Diola  4  7/DNF  7/DNS  4  3  25
6. 7156  Geoff Gales Aaron Ross  6  7/DNS  7/DNS  7/DNC  7/DNC  34