The racing season continues this weekend with the first race of Seattle Yacht Club’s Tri-Island Series, the Protection Island race. Look for Bruce Hedrick’s weather report and race brief later today.
Last weekend 50 boats raced CYCs PSSR and Jan Anderson was on hand to catch the action with her lens. We didn’t get a lot of reports from the courses, but it’s noteworthy that there were four of the eight classes and well over half the fleet were one-design.
The largest among those classes was the resilient J/105 class, with eight boats. The 105s seem to turn out a class for nearly every event, and we’re going to take a closer look at why this fleet has maintained solid participation over the years. One key may be that a lot of them have ended up sharing P-dock at Shilshole, so post race connection is a natural extension of the competition.
While Erik Kristen’s More Jubilee won the event handily, the biggest moment in the regatta came as Tango and Inconceivable were tied going into race seven and were basically just racing each other. Going downwind on the 2nd leg they were neck and neck for the lead. They all gybed to starboard except for Inconceivable which continued out towards the middle of the Sound. It looked like they had taken a flyer and Tango would win the race – until Inconceivable showed up at the leeward mark ahead of everyone. Inconceivable went on to finish ahead of Tango in the last race, even putting a boat between them, to sew up second.
In other classes on the north course, Shrek won a tight class, the Sierra 26s ran away with Class 2 and Tom Greetham’s Distraction won the Melges 24s. On the south course the Here & Now and Zipper won their respective PHRF classes while Taj Mahal and Return won the J/80 and San Juan 24 fleets.
If you have some regatta stories or thoughts, please call me or email me and I’ll try to work them into the race reports. Thanks. In the meantime, here are some of Jan Anderson’s photos. Don’t forget to visit her site get some shots to adorn your wall (or your crews’).
Kurt grew up racing and cruising in the Midwest, and has raced Lasers since the late 1970s. Currently he is a broker at Swiftsure Yachts. He has been Assistant Editor at Sailing Magazine and a short stint as Editor of Northwest Yachting. Through Meadow Point Publishing he handles various marketing duties for smaller local companies. He currently is partners on a C&C 36 which he cruises throughout the Northwest. He’s married to the amazing Abby and is father to Ian and Gabe.