Thank you so much for all of your support and help not only with my most recent regatta, the Ficker Cup, but also throughout past couple of years.
The Ficker Cup took place at Long Beach Yacht Club, right in Los Alamitos in Long Beach, CA. The yacht club owns a fleet of Catalina 37’s that have been designed and modified precisely for match racing off of Belmont Pier. So when we arrived we were excited to get out and practice since it was the first time on the boats for myself and a couple of other crewmembers. The entire crew consisted of:
Matt Reynolds – Main/Pit
Jake Reynolds – Jib
Payson Infelise –Jib/Spin
Steve Flam – Tactics
Tyler Prentice – Bow
We had a great team and Wednesday turned out to be a great practice day with moderate breeze and sunshine all day long.
Thursday was the first day of racing which was to consist of a double round robin between the eight teams to determine the winner and the holder of the final spot in the Congressional Cup, which was immediately after the Ficker Cup. We started off strong winning our first three races and confident that we were as good as any of the other crews in the new-to-us boats. We went 1-1 in our last two races to finish off the day tied for the lead with Mike Quaglio from Oakcliff.
Friday was to be the make or break day because with the double round robin, there was not a lot of room for error in the second round robin. The way the tie-breaker works is if you go 1-1 versus an opponent the win goes to the team that wins the last race, making the second round wins that much more important. We finished the first round robin 5-2, one win behind Quaglio and tied with Dustin Durant from LBYC. As the day progressed however, Quaglio faltered a couple of times, while Team SDYC and Durant continued on undefeated. At the end of Day 2 we stood tied with Durant each with 2 losses, and three races left, including the final race against Durant.
Saturday was definitely the lightest of the race days, with winds in the 5-8 knot range, while most of the week we had seen the wind in the low teens. All we had to do was win one of our first two races to ensure that the final race against Durant would be for the Ficker Cup. Our first race was against Peter Wickwire from Canada, the top ranked competitor in the event, at 35th in the world rankings. He was barely leading at the first windward mark and attempted to hook us to windward in hopes of luffing us while he could peel off on the downwind leg with a larger cushion and clear air. As he went for the hook we dove our bow down hard, passing his stern with inches to spare and rounding the windward mark cleanly while Wickwire luffed into the wind dumbfounded that we had escaped. It was an awesome moment and a great way to start the day. On top of all of that, we won the race and set up the final race against Durant.
The final race was extremely close the entire time. At the start we were dead even, with Durant slightly to windward of us. This is what we had hoped for as the left was working the entire day in the southwesterly breeze. Durant tacked and left us to control the left. As we came together at the windward mark it was clear that we were not going to cross, so we had to duck just outside of the two boatlength circle. Durant went for the standard “slam dunk” tack on top of us to ensure that we could not tack back on to starboard to get him. He was not prepared though for us to luff him up, which we did, and we ended up luffing just to leeward of the windward mark for at least two minutes. Neither one of us wanting to make the first move.
Durant’s only move was to hold us there and hope that we accelerate out on port where he can continue to pin us. And our only move was to hold Durant to windward of us and hope that he tacks onto starboard where we can follow suit and pin him on starboard. Eventually he did tack and we took full advantage and tacked on him and rounded the windward mark two boatlengths ahead. However, we had luffed for so long at the windward mark that another race had caught up to us and by the time we set our spinnaker the other race was right on top of us, with Dustin directly behind them. When we went to gybe away and get clear air, Dustin simultaneously gybed and was able to speed up to us and sit on us. He rolled us right there at the windward mark and protected the entire downwind leg. At times we were able to gain bits and pieces back, but never enough to truly engage him in another tacking or gybing battle. We ended up losing by 6 boatlengths and finishing a close second in the Ficker Cup.
We were extremely happy with how we finished, despite a tight final race, and would like to make our gratitude known to the SDYC Competition Fund and all of SDYC. It was a great honor to be able to race as Team SDYC and we hope to continue to improve as the year goes on.
Sincerely,
Nevin Snow