On behalf of my crew, we would like to thank you for supporting our team in the California Dreaming Match Race Series. Having the support of the San Diego Yacht Club Competition Committee made it possible for our team to compete in these high caliber events and we are very proud to fly and represent the San Diego Yacht Club Burgee.
The California Dreaming Series is comprised of three match race regattas hosted by Long Beach Yacht Club, St Francis Yacht Club, and San Diego Yacht Club. The series began in early February and finished up in late March and was created to enhance the match racing discipline of our sport and encourage yacht clubs up and down the California Coast to get involved with match racing. The first regatta was hosted by SDYC in our J22's on San Diego Bay. For the regattas I was very fortunate enough to put together an all-star crew made entirely of SDYC sailors. I was able to recruit Brennen Clark to man the bow and trim the jib, Andy Reiter in the pit and calling tactics, and Nick Martin trimming the main and flying the spinnaker downwind. This was the first time we had all sailed together let alone a J22 so we tried to use the weekend primarily as a learning experience. Since we all came from dinghy backgrounds we tried to use our short course team racing skills to our advantage. This was also my first time skippering a match race so I was excited to see how my dinghy skills would pay off. Over the course of the weekend we made dramatic improvements in our crew work and communication. Simple mistakes that had cost us in early races had been eliminated and we were finally beginning to sail as a team. Unfortunately this always seems to happen towards the end of an event and with time running out we found our stride too little too late. We ended up finishing the regatta second overall and just one race out of first. We made tremendous improvements over the course of the weekend and we were happy with our result.
Three weeks after competing in the first of the CA Dreaming series we set off to San Francisco for the second stop of the series. For the second regatta we traded our weatherman and tactician Andy Reiter for the San Francisco Bay extraordinaire, Melanie Roberts. The first day of racing was light and hot, very abnormal for San Francisco Bay. We spent a majority of the weekend sitting around waiting for wind and when there was wind we were stuck waiting for the race committee to try to set a square course in the 3.5 knot ebb. This became a very frustrating routine as we sat back and watched ideal match racing conditions fade away as we waited for racing. Unfortunately we finished the weekend having barley completed the round robin, a shock considering the excellent venue that San Francisco bay typically provides. Having dropped a couple of races early on we won out on day two (again, too little too late) and we finished the regatta a disappointing 5th place. While we had a great time, we were all hoping to have done more racing but we left San Francisco feeling optimistic and looking forward to the next regatta in Long Beach.
The final stop of the series was the Butler Cup hosted at Long Beach Yacht Club in Catalina 37's. For this regatta we recruited some more teammates to help us get the "aircraft carrier" around the course. We were lucky enough to have Max Hutcheson, Austin and Jessica Dias, Nick Martin, Roger O'Connor and my father Chuck Sinks join us for the final event. With wind forecasted in the mid to high twenties, we had a sneaky suspicion that there was a chance we could get blown out. On Saturday the race committee decided to call racing early due to the high wind advisory and an ominous weather forecast. Sunday was clear skies and gusty conditions and the race committee wanted to make every attempt to give us some racing. We motored out to the racecourse through heavy chop and freezing spray. By the time we reached the race course the wind began gusting into the low 30's. After sailing around waiting to race the sailing was finally called off for the weekend due to the high winds and a choppy seascape. In our sport we rely heavily on the elements cooperating, unfortunately we were not as lucky as we had been in the previous regattas.
On behalf of my crew, we would like to thank you once again for your support in the 2012 California Dreaming Match Race Series. Without your support this experience would not have been possible.
Sincerely,
Tyler Sinks