By Peter Salusbury, owner and skipper of Longboard.
This was the 50th anniversary of the Southern Straits Race classic and weather cooperated for what most will admit was a very pleasant and enjoyable race. Bruce’s pre-race forecast was mostly spot on though the NW wind stayed on a little longer than forecast into Saturday morning and then re-built closer to Vancouver to get most boats home early Saturday evening.
After a brief postponement waiting for the westerly winds to build into English Bay, all the fleets started in a light westerly which built fairly quickly as we passed Point Atkinson and hit the Bowen Island shore. On the long course, most boats left the Bowen Island shore after reaching Cowan Point and started the long starboard tack over to the Nanaimo harbor area. The now NW wind built to between 12 to 16 knots all afternoon. The Shadow, Blue, Ha a’Koa, and Jam really legged out with their long waterlines on the smaller long course boats (Longboard and Poke & Destroy) but we stayed in touch enough that after rounding Ballenas Island (the first time), we could start to gain back some of those upwind losses. The long and fast downwind sail to T10 was beautiful with a huge full moon all night long and clear skies. On Longboard, we seemed to notice an unusual amount of wood in the water and twice ran smack into substantial logs doing 10+ knots!
On the downwind leg, it seemed to pay dividends to keep tacking to port offshore every time the wind went light while on starboard tack. We always found bigger breeze offshore and made big gains on our fleet by approaching T10 from the north.
After rounding T10, we had a solid beat upwind to Ballenas (second time) with winds peaking out over 20+ knots at time, but lightening substantially after Nanaimo harbor. Going upwind, it seemed advantageous to be a little closer to the Valdez/Gabriola Island shores as we picked up a nice port tack lift which definitely helped us on those competitors who were more offshore.
After rounding Ballenas, the NW backed to more of a westerly and softened to less than 5 knots. On Longboard, we favoured the north side of the course home, found a very nice 4 to 7 knot northerly which seldom hit the water but we were able to keep the boat moving at 3 to 5 knots and sneak by Boondoggle and Hamachi. Eventually the NE wind disappeared, and after a short period of calms (good time for hot oatmeal and cinnamon buns), a very light westerly started to build which continued to build all the way to the finish. The smaller, slower boats on the Long Course were a little less fortunate with the westerly dying off not long after we finished on Longboard with many finishing late into Saturday evening – well done to them for persevering and getting a result. Overall, a very pleasant but somewhat ‘longer’ Long Course race compared to more recent years – but no rain, no clouds, full moon, lots of sun – none of us were complaining!
The provisional results can be found here:
https://www.wvyc.ca/Default.aspx?p=dynamicmodule&pageid=407589&ssid=334718&vnf=1
Peter McCarthy’s recently acquired TP-52 The Shadow was first boat home on the Long Course with Michael Schoendorf’s very well sailed Riptide 41 Blue finishing not far behind to take the PHRF Overall win. The boat that really impressed us on the Long Course was Bill Fox’s J/160 Jam who took the ORC Overall win by a wide margin – they appeared to sail a flawless race – super fast up wind, and really managed the light air on the last leg to get the win – kudos to their team.
On the Medium Course, Ross and Marcia Macdonald’s recently acquired X-41 DAIA took the line honors win (they were so fast upwind) but the experienced and always well sailed Shock 35 Excalibur skippered by Jason Vandergaag took the overall win in a very large 42 boat fleet. J/109’s seemed to love the conditions as they took 3rd to 5th overall with a double handed J/120 called Shearwater skippered by Justin Wolfe taking an impressive 6th place overall beating some very talented fully crewed boats. Great job to you both!
On the Short course, a perennial winner, William Phillips CY 8.0 Incisor took line honours, but the irrepressible C&C 30 Silik skippered by Wade Harrogate prevailed once again to take the Short Course overall corrected time win.
Once again, the race organizing committee deserve so much credit for making the 50th anniversary race so successful. On behalf of all participants, I’d like to thank first time Race Chairman, Mike Seper, and his army of volunteers at West Vancouver Yacht Club for making the race possible – great job, Mike! And lastly, thanks so much to all the participants who travelled from afar from home bases like Seattle and Victoria for the race – we appreciate the commitment you make to deliver your boats up and back at this time of the year and hope to see you all back next year.
Ed. Note: I’m hoping for some more photography. If more is forthcoming, I’ll put the photos in a separate post.
congratulations on a well sailed race
It was a great race. Thank you Peter for the Tech talk before the race. It did help us “newbies” on the course a great deal. Great organisation by Mike & the team. We had a ton of fun aboard Salient and yes it was a long race – so we had fun for much longer but managed to finish before the midnight!