The array of container, tanker, and cruise ships in Long Beach Harbor shook up the breeze while the Santa Anas fought to come in all weekend, giving us moderate wind on Saturday resulting in a delayed start and sporty conditions on Sunday. Traci Miller, Kim Stanford, Jessica Sweeney, Marnie Jenkins, Kara Voss, Julie Mitchell, Tiffany Billings and Alexa Cavalieri joined helmswoman Kris Zillmann for 7 races against some of the best female sailors on the West Coast. Team SDYC ended up 5th overall, but was proud of the effort and the comeback on day 2 when we finally got our Catalina 37 moving.
Of the 13 people who confirmed they would come, only 9 sailors ended up making the team. Director Bell and Sandy Vissman were sidelined with knee issues and the morning of practice I got that phone call that no one wants to get – one of our team’s fiancées was struck by a motorist while cycling and was awaiting surgery to fix a fractured femur. The couple stayed in our thoughts all weekend and we did the best we could with the people left standing. A team of seven sailors coordinated schedules and made it out for the practice sail on Friday in a dying sea breeze – in fact, at 1pm PRO Becky Ashburn advised us that code flag Juliet was flying when everyone else went out and so we rigged with a small jib, (which I had never used before) and headed out to experience the dying winds. Since we had expected to sail with different people, we needed the time to experiment and move people around to fill the gaps and so we didn’t mind the light wind.
Consistency, not bullets won the regatta for Hawaii YC this year. On such short legs and where the breeze and boat speed wasn’t steady, we saw that there were huge gains to be kept by staying away from interactions and destroying people’s lanes with rumble mode. Using a slower boat as a pick was also useful a couple of times to get us a better position on the pack and off the line. We had trouble figuring out how to get the upwind gears shifting on Saturday but when the breeze turned on for Sunday’s 3 races, we managed to win the day even though we had to sail the last race in a steady 18+knts with jibs and no spinnakers.
Team SDYC will be ready for the next time and we would like to thank the SDYC and Competition Fund for their generous support of our efforts in 2021. We also would have gotten no where if Director Bell hadn’t provided us with the housing and the hot-tub we needed to be ready for the breeze on Sunday. Congrats to the winners and we’ll be seeing them next year.