J/Fest at San Diego Yacht Club is always a special regatta on the J/105 and J/120 racing calendars. Jeff Brown, Joanne O’Dea, and the JK3 team put on a great event and the SDYC Race Committee executed well, as usual. There was close and competitive racing in both fleets with a fun group of sailors.
The J/105 fleet at J/Fest consisted of five highly competitive teams - Blink!, Creative, J OK, Wings, and Viggen, a small fleet but the racing was fierce. The format was set up to have 3 races on Saturday and 2 on Sunday, with a fun party on Saturday night.
Out of the gate on Saturday, Viggen was unstoppable, starting the regatta with a win. Wings finished third in the first race. In the second race of the day, Wings and Viggen traded finishes, and were tied for first place with 4 points each. After the J/105’s finished the second race, they watched as the conditions for the J/120 fleet imploded on their last leeward leg. The sea breeze was fighting the warmer Santa Ana winds, resulting in suboptimal racing conditions. The race committee pulled anchor and moved the course trying to find steady breeze, hoping to get a third race off on Saturday. As the fleet moved around the Coronado roads, the breeze dropped to below sailable conditions, so the race committee called off the rest of sailing for the day.
The forecast for Sunday was all over the board, some forecast for very light winds, 4-5 knots at best, and other forecasts called for very breezy, 17 - 19 knots, with gusts to 25. Well, the breezy forecast won out, after a very light morning on the ocean. The race committee ran three races on Sunday, in “victory at sea” conditions. The warmer Santa Ana puffs came in from the right, while the sea breeze with its cooler wind came in from the left. Full hiking on the rail for everyone in that breeze!
The conditions on Sunday proved very favorable for team Wings, who won each of the races, giving them the title of overall winner of the J/105 J/Fest trophy. Viggen and Blink! tied for second, with 14 points, with Viggen winning the tiebreaker and claiming second place.
For the J/120 fleet, this year was particularly interesting because J/Fest was the final event of the J/120 Southern California Championship Series, and three boats entered J/Fest separated by a single point in the overall standings. J/Fest results would determine the season championship.
On Saturday, the results were very tight with Chuck Nichols’ CC Rider holding a 1 point lead over 3 other boats and a fourth boat only a further point behind.
Sunday was epic. There were 3 great races in mostly 15 to 25 knots, with enough shifts to make it very interesting. Gybing a full size J/120 ½ ounce runner in 25 knots certainly focused the entire crew’s attention.
After the first 2 races on Sunday, the first won by CC Rider and the second by John Laun’s caper, it would all come down to the final race with J/Fest and the season in play for those two teams. The wind was honking and the racing was close. In the end, caper won and CC Rider placed second in both the J/Fest regatta and the overall championship (on a tie-breaker). John Snook’s JIM placed 3rd in J/Fest and Rudy Hasl’s Hasl Free took the 3rd podium place in the overall season championship (and handily won the season offshore series completed earlier).
All the sailors and the regatta chair would like to thank Becky Ashburn, Summer Greene and their team of dedicated race committee volunteers for giving us a great event.