(San Francisco, CA)- Over the course of a few years, the California
Match Race programs have continued to evolve from the classic big boat
programs in Long Beach on Cat37s to a host of events sailed at various
locations to encourage participation at the grass roots levels. This
past weekend, the St Francis YC hosted its first 2012 "Cal Dreamin"
Match Race event as a preliminary qualifier for the US Sailing Match
Racing Championships. An active participant in the match-racing program
is Nicole Breault- a four-time College All-American for YALE's Sailing
Team ("other graduates" include Dave Perry, Peter Isler, Steve Benjamin,
Jonathan McKee, Stan Honey, Steve Taylor, amongst others). Here's
Nicole's report of the event:"Both Saturday and Sunday racing brought the challenges of the shoulder season here in SF Bay. We had light winds from the east and north, before moderate westerlies prevailed in the afternoons. As a result, on both days we had periods of time where we drifted in swirling tides, flights were called off due to vanishing breeze, and weird cross-current racecourses messed with apparent wind and forced the RC to implement a long off-set leg from the windward mark.
In spite of the challenges, we were able to sail a full round robin on the first day, and half of one on the second day. My team was tied, 6-1, after round one with Steven Lowery's team from Chicago. Since the decision was made to race the second round robin on Sunday (with the possibility of not finishing it and having to use a scoring system to determine results), the overall win was riding on our match against Team Lowery, which happened during the first flight of the day.
Steven pealed us off at the committee boat at the start, and we opted to power to leeward of him. In spite of getting a lead, we were pinned with the port layline approaching quickly due to the cross current. We then tacked and ducked, engaging them in a tacking duel which we hoped would go our way. Alas, their tacks were great and we ended up falling back a couple of lengths. The offset leg was a tight reach into the tide, we gambled and set our chute for a minor gain. On the downwind leg, we got on their air and reeled them in. We decided to try and pass them on the inside to the leeward mark, so initiated a simo-gybe to starboard. We rolled them, but they were able to pin us past the port layline and gybe back into a solid lead. The second lap we failed to make gains and had only ourselves to blame for the loss.
In the end, we finished the weekend 8-2, second overall. The outstanding scenery and sunshine of SF Bay this past weekend matched the great competition and camaraderie of the California Dreamin' Series. I am thoroughly looking forward to our next stop in Long Beach for the Butler Cup! Cheers, Nicole". Sailing Photo Credits- Heike Schwab
