Protection Island Smackdown Seamanship Race

What started out as seemingly a light air race last Saturday turned into a barn burner, one that sent most of the SYC’s Protection Long Course racers home, humbled. Long course boats started dropping out while they approached Point Wilson when winds topped 30. Short course boats never saw those extreme conditions, but still had plenty of wind.

First to finish on the long course, and the only finisher in the big boat “0” class was Marek Omilian’s TP 52 Sonic. Maybe it has something to do with Omilan’s Clipper Race experience (around the world), because he not only had reef points in his main, but had reefing lines ready to go. His account of the race is worth reading.

This race puts issue of rough weather sailing comes front and center. There’s no doubt the sailors have the skills to deal with the heavy conditions. There is a question of whether the boats are up to the task. Some boats, even with huge mains, don’t have reef points. In a quest for that extra 1/100th of a knot of speed, there are no reef points or the reef lines are left out even in the face of a coming blow. And the boats themselves are so powerful, and so fast, that pounding into a seaway can tear a boat apart.

Alan Johnson points out that there’s another question regarding the big boats – who wants too risk blowing out a $25K sail?

And there were very big seas. “Some of the biggest waves I’ve seen,” said Nigel Barron aboard Crossfire, that was one of the last to pull out.

One ultra light, powered up boat that handled the conditions was Jonathan McKee’s Dark Star. Of course McKee is one of the more experienced sailors around and worked with Paul Bieker to come up with a boat fully capable of rough water sailing. Estimating the worst of the waves to be about 11′ and the waves “really vertical,” he agrees the conditions were about as bad as they get on Puget Sound, but you could see them coming and they didn’t stay that way too long. Without judging anyone’s decision to pull out of the race, he noted that the big boats dropping out “sends a message to the whole community” that big weather is something to avoid. Dark Star was the lone finisher in class “1,” coming in about an hour after Sonic.

For Hamachi, it made sense to pull out because it would have made no sense to break the boat just before it was to be shipped south for the start of the Transpac later this year. Instead of pounding upwind, they did some downwind training:

And then there were the fun rides home. Here’s Malcolm MacNeil’s video from Crossfire’s return home.

On the shorter course, they had a great, fast race. Erik Kristen won overall with the J 105 More Jubilee after a close dual with sistership Panic. A healthy fleet of six starters sailed the cruiser-racer course.

Results here.