Over the weekend of June 29-30, Team SDYC competed in St. Francis Yacht Club's Team Race Invitational hosted at StFYC in J/22's. The team consisted of skippers Tyler Sinks, Brian Haines and Nevin Snow with an excellent crew of Austin Dias, Parker Mitchell, Erica Parker, Jake La Dow, Jake Reynolds, Joe Markee, Kaitlin Driscoll, Rex Cameron and Nick Martin. It was a great group looking forward to the first day of intense racing on the San Francisco city front.
There were six teams in attendance, with a three team rotation, so a double round robin was completed followed by a semifinals and finals. SDYC started off strong but lost three races over the course of the first day to put them comfortably in third place going into the last few races of the second round robin. To start off the second day, SDYC had already clinched a spot in the semifinals but wanted to gain momentum in the last two races of the round robins. That is exactly what they did, winning two key races and bringing that confidence into the semifinals against the St. Francis YC team made up of the younger members of their team race sailors.
The semifinal matchup of SDYC v. StFYC - Young was best of three races. The wind had picked up to be steadily over 20 knots and the race committee decided to disallow the teams from using spinnakers. SDYC kept the momentum going by winning two close races that were so fast and action packed the fact that the teams were in heavy keelboats did not even matter. StFYC clearly had their home waters figured out because it was the other StFYC team that made it to the finals to face SDYC. This StFYC team was comprised of the more seasoned members of their team race program. The wind was still so the spinnakers were still down, but that didn't stop StFYC from steamrolling SDYC off the start to make a statement in the first race. It was SDYC's first loss of the day and definitely a tough one. However, SDYC showed great poise for being the youngest team out there and came back firing, winning the next two races to take the win over StFYC in dramatic fashion. It was a great weekend of great sailing and plenty of breeze, averaging 17-22 knots.
Thank you so much to the SDYC Competition Syndicate Fund for helping the team to compete in the St. Francis Team Race Invitational and we hope to continue to make SDYC proud in the future.
Nevin Snow